


yield strength

by tkillamockingbird (Theboys)



Category: Black Panther (2018), Black Panther (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Power Imbalance, Psychological Trauma, Rough Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-04-08 03:39:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14096397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theboys/pseuds/tkillamockingbird
Summary: In the end, nobody dies. No one has to.[yield strength: the stress at which a material begins to deform]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> look i've got a main fandom that i'm trash for BUT i realize that trash is made up of all sorts of shit and it's garbage can, not garbage cannot, etc, etc, so. here be angst in my new trash bin

_There’s four different kind of fauna near the border of Wakanda and Canaan, which the Border Tribe is charged with guarding so religiously. Of all four that I seen, two are poisonous._

_There's a snake in every garden._

Erik’s dressed for the terrain.

There is a light breeze, tempered by the rapidly setting sun, but his hands are situated firmly in front of his pelvis, bound by vibranium.

He makes no effort to dislodge himself, and he cups dry palms together.

The man in front of him is clearly their leader, and he has stopped only the once, in an effort to soothe one of the great beasts he is tasked with caring for.

Erik’s eyes wander, an approximation of aimlessness, and he follows the slither of the chain hanging from the Leader’s garment.

It catches against the slink of gold in the sky, hissing a vibrant purple that fades almost as quickly as Erik trains his eye upon it.

Erik rolls his neck once as they come upon the crest of a hill.

The Leader turns, halfway cautious, as if to ascertain Erik’s reaction.

“We comin’ or goin’?” Erik asks, and the charge moves forward.

-

Adrenaline is humming strangely through his blood when they cross the threshold of the Throne Room, and he makes eye contact with the King.

It is the second time they’ve had the chance to see one another, and T’Challa’s eyes are warm, hardened over with slate.

They are wide and non-duplicitous, and Erik’s traps ripple strangely under fabric. It takes most of his bearing to remain motionless.

The next few minutes are chaotic.

His Wakandan is rusty at best, a nine-year-old’s faulty memory at play, but he must do alright, because there is commotion and disorientation to serve his purpose.

When they drag him out of the room, bodily, T’Challa’s eyes are wet.

The Throne hums of vibranium, and Erik can hear the pulse of it, a steady _clickclickclick._

-

They’re allowed to meet beforehand. Erik suspects it has little to do with his wishes (he doesn’t care either way; he’s got one goal) and everything to do with the boy-King’s.

T’Challa is a child.

Educated, complacent and foolish.

T’Challa’s hands are behind his back, jugular exposed from the casual V of his royal robes.

Erik’s hands are still bound, wrists just beginning to chafe from the unfamiliarity of the substance enclosing them.

T’Challa makes eye contact with his female paramilitary unit—the Dora Milaje, if his teaching stands correct, and they do not hasten to fall back.

“I would speak to my cousin without ears,” he says, his voice slight, yet firm.

“Nothing to discuss, ladies,” Erik says, his eyes focused on the tapestry above the King’s head. It resembles a herd of antelope, galloping in between slender spires of metal. The metal rises from the earth itself, intermingled with the plant-life, the very roots of the ground.

The art shimmers in rising moonlight, that abnormal purple hue that Erik cannot escape.

“As it stands,” T’Challa continues, after a lengthy pause.

“My King—“ one of them begins, head cleanly shaven, a razor sharpness around the warm soil of her skull.

T’Challa says nothing, and the moment passes.

The women retreat, but Erik can feel their vibranium. It pulsates to a foreign rhythm, a tandem march that echoes underneath the raised ridges of his skin.

He itches, all over.

“I ain’t got nothing to say to you,” Erik says, and he finally brings his eyes to rest on the King’s face.

“It is not what you have to say to me,” T’Challa says wearily, “but what I must tell you.”

Erik is silent, contemplative. While he is decisive to a fault, none of it comes impulsively. Impulsivity cost the lives of his brothers. There is no refractory period from bad decisions.

“I. I have not long known who you are. It was not until recently that I was told of your existence.” T’Challa bows forward until the vulnerable nape of his neck is exposed.

“There is no. No recompense for what has been done to you. For what you have lost.” T’Challa’s voice is quavering, a slight hitch to his cadence that may have been lost to translation if Erik weren’t seeking it out.

“I have accepted your challenge. Tomorrow morning, we fight, and may you find all you seek.” T’Challa’s breath comes in small gasps, and Erik watches his chest rise and fall, erratic in his guilt.

“What I seek,” Erik says, and T’Challa looks up, eyes oval in his face, large and humorless.

“Is an end to the oppression of our people,” he continues, and he watches the divot in T’Challa’s forehead deepen. “I want them to protect themselves, with just a little bit of that shit y’all keep on lock.”

T’Challa opens his mouth, but then seems to think better of it, unclasping his forearms from behind his back.

“I want,” Erik says, blood running warm, his own armstrong limit, “to drag Wakanda into the damn sun.”

He can taste his own essence like this, rust and scorched earth. T’Challa spreads his hands between them, signet ring catching the light, just so.

“It doesn’t have to be this way--” he pleads, and Erik focuses on the way his pupils dilate, the way his sincerity rings in echoes around the hall.

Erik is moving before he’s conscious of it, his body jerking forward, battle-ready and automatic.

T’Challa is shorter than him by a bit, slighter by a lot, and the King’s posture goes rigid, slinks into something coiled and graceful. Erik can’t put his finger on it, and his body hums with the want of release.

“You just like them,” he laughs, shaking bound fists in front of the King just to watch his eyes dart downwards.

“You still think it matters what you want.”

-

In the end, nobody dies.

No one has to, and T’Challa’s blood sings with that same hum, exposed and beautiful to the sound.

-

They don’t deny him his throne or his birthright. T’Challa’s twin ring is on his finger, where it won’t stay, but it connects with a dull vibration against its cousin metal of the throne, and the sound is cacophonic.

His council winces at the connection, and Erik’s body seizes up, head reverberating with increased hearing and vision.

He wonders if it’s just him.

Who can scent It out of the very soil It hides within.

-

They call him Killmonger when they believe him out of range, and King Killmonger when they believe him just within.

They think of him as barely human, much less than man, an animalistic machine.

Erik’s got no desire for bloodshed. It’s inefficient and demoralizing. He could use those bodies for his work.

Where they are correct, is in that he does not _mind_ shedding blood.

There is a difference, and they will learn.

-

T’Challa is human. So far less than what he once was that Erik wonders if he can still reach the place from where he began.

Erik keeps his hands bound for the first months, but gradually realizes that the former King will do nothing to endanger his people.

He also knows that T’Challa is patient, a trait that must run in the family. He will bide his time.

“What is your plan?” He asks, subdued, as he has been since Erik has given him nothing but time and space, a prisoner in his own world.

The Dora are forbidden to speak with him, and guard him against those usurpers who might kidnap him in order to begin his journey back to the throne.

“You may tell me what you wish, no more and no less,” T’Challa says, and it is with a heavy sigh that he takes a seat, soft robe clinging to his ever more prominent collarbone.

Erik must watch him strangely, because T’Challa’s ducks his face to the floor and curls his hands together.

“There will be no one to come for me. If that is what alarms you,” T’Challa whispers, his voice a fraction of its usual volume. He is physically healed from the injury Erik delivered him on the Falls, but he is no longer Wakanda’s panther, body humming along at less than 100.

Erik thinks he could kill him on accident. A stray hand. A sharp shake.

Erik made his body into a failsafe. There was no safety to be found. The herb agrees with him. He was already his own monster.

“If I hadn’t beat your ass, you’d be on the Throne. Don’t talk no shit, like they don’t want you back.” Erik is caustic with his words, and T’Challa blinks up at him with lidded eyes.

“Be that as it may, it is for me and my honor to take back my own Throne,” T’Challa says, and then he stands, swaying in place as the blood rushes to his head.

Erik smells the sharp tang of the laced fluid, running right up and down through T’Challa’s skin like disease.

“It would be. It would be--insulting,” he tries, lip pinched in between two rows of teeth as he tries to figure out how to best communicate.

Erik can see the dearth of language, understands that it would be a bit more than offensive, but he also knows there’s no English equivalent to the slight.

“Then why ain’t you fight me for it back?” Erik asks, rolling his sleeves up past his forearms in anticipation.

His scars itch in excitement, fire ants tripping down flesh.

“You would destroy me,” T’Challa says, looking up at him with something like sadness. “You would tear me to pieces. It is the way.”

Erik’s hands are around T’Challa’s throat in the time it takes for his cousin to finish swallowing, and he knows he could snap the former King’s neck before the Dora could unsheath spear and blade.

T’Challa’s feet rise from the floor, dangling effortlessly, a doll for Erik’s use.

It isn’t until his eyes flutter closed that Erik releases him, only for T’Challa to slip almost to the floor, more than halfway unconscious.

“You ain’t helping if you dead,” Erik hisses, hauling T’Challa into his arms. He settles him on his allotted bed, and T’Challa turns his head, neck already laced with the bruises of one of Erik’s hands, the teeth of a new necklace.

“You’re Wakanda, man,” Erik says, and he also crosses so close that T’Challa tenses, body curling inward for protection.

It makes Erik uneasy, and he steps backwards, a pace or two away.

“You coming with me, into the light.”

-

The Queen Mother and Her Royal Princess are kept in apartments across the capital. They’re decadent and royal and up-to-par, as the team updates, and when Erik is ready, he will take T’Challa to visit them himself.

As it is, he is preparing his troops to deliver working and accessible technology across the globe, little by little, until they are able to understand and master each new marvel.

That’s where T’Challa comes in.

The people are restless under his reign, outwardly deferential, but Erik has no interest in mingling with them.

He wishes them no ill-will; they are as much a product of their system as he is his own, but they are safe and protected. They don’t need him, and they never will.

He finds T’Challa facing a bay window, robe halfway disentangled from his body.

It is early morning. Far earlier than Erik usually has time to visit.

It is quiet between them, the wiry lines of T’Challa’s back, rendered thinner under malnutrition, his refusal to maintain body weight.

“I cannot help you.”

It is so quiet Erik could have missed it. He cannot hear the hum of vibranium. He can’t hear anything at all, blanketed in the ascent of the sun, golden-flame-rust coalescing at the edge of the world.

“Good thing I ain’t asking,” he replies, and T’Challa huffs out a laugh, soft and surprised.

Erik feels bile rise in his throat. Unpleasant.

“It is not the way. I cannot teach these---” he trails off, the soft stutters he yields when he has trouble placing the English synonym. “Outsiders. I cannot make them understand how to be like Wakanda.”

Erik looms behind him, broad enough to cover the expanse of his entire body, close enough to rest a chin on his shoulder blade, if he so chose.

“I need you to teach ‘em how to work everything. No need in them blowing themselves to Kingdom Come if I got the remote.”

T’Challa shivers under the proximity and turns carefully, so that no part of them touches.

Erik shoves closer, in an effort to provide discomfort. T’Challa’s skull actually smacks against vibranium-laced glass as he peers up at Erik with effort.

“I’ll burn this country from the ground up. All your children will be orphans. You ain’t ever gonna be able to grow anything in your soil for the rest of eternity.” Erik says, blood rising, too close to fury when it’s not yet warranted.

T’Challa’s hands are superimposed on the glass behind him.

If Erik sniffs, just a bit, he can scent that sharp, lemon-tang of T’Challa’s fear. It’s visceral. An aphrodisiac.

“If you give them this,” T’Challa says, and his voice is smooth, like sanded glass, “What is to stop them from turning on you, and burning our home to the ground first?”

T’Challa finally meets his gaze, and Erik blinks into earnest brown before pulling away.

He could bite T’Challa at the jugular. He could watch him collect at his feet.

-

_The scent is louder at night. It’s all I can smell. For miles, I think. If I tried. It’s fear scent. There’s something underneath it. Strong enough to make me search it out. It ain’t good, whatever it is. To make me wanna be running around after it. Like that._

-

T’Challa hides the blood from him for weeks until Erik comes thirty minutes sooner than usual to take him on lunch, a routine he has concocted in an effort to stabilize T’Challa’s life in Erik’s new world.

As it is, T’Challa is binding his wrists, quietly and efficiently, feet tucked underneath him as he perches on the edge of his bed.

“What the hell you doing.”

Erik’s voice doesn’t tip into rage, stays just below, in that cold place that serves him up into the incandescence that got him so many kills he can’t count them all, not anymore.

For the first time, T’Challa looks guilty. Erik does not realize the loss of the openness T’Challa has provided him, until it’s gone.

“What happened to your fucking wrists, T’Challa?” Erik is close enough that he can take hold of one wrist and jerk it up to meet his eyes.

T’Challa makes a pained sound, a whimper ground out from between taut teeth, and Erik knows he’s using too much force, but this is unacceptable.

What good is he maimed?

T’Challa does not meet his eyes, and when Erik jerks his chin upwards for contact, the brown is deadened. There’s nothing but flat pupil, and Erik recoils as if he’s been slapped.

“An accident,” T’Challa says, right wrist held limp in Erik’s over-tight grip.

“Not enough to render me useless, I promise you,” T’Challa adds, voice a smooth monotone.

Erik can see the claret seeping through white. The very deepness of the wounds belies his words.

T’Challa allows both wrists to be manhandled into one of Erik’s own, and Erik shakes him--constant and violent, T’Challa’s body flung back and forth, side to side, until something snaps and T’Challa leaks bloodied vibranium right from his mouth.

Erik despises impulsivity.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

It takes...longer than expected. 

The Dora are efficient, already to T’Challa’s side before Erik can release his body and call for aid. 

T’Challa slides down to connect with his sheets, robe open from sternum to navel, eyes sightless. 

Erik follows the strait from mouth to chin, a desecration of red. 

It’s a hollow feeling. 

Erik’s hands are cumbersome by his sides, but he forces them to bend, regardless. It’s too slow, too unwieldy, and the Dora must have a connection to T’Challa that he’s missed, because they thunder inside, apropos of nothing. 

Erik’s body does not react, and the women brush past him, effervescent, speaking in Wakandan too brusque for him to understand. 

They raise T’Challa as one, cradled like a newborn, with all the honor afforded a King. 

The ring on T’Challa’s finger is the only pulse of vibranium as they leave, an intermittent buzz. 

-

When T’Challa wakes, Erik has not shaved in three days. 

The attending doctor’s pulse is erratic, spikes of rage that intensify whenever her gaze catches on Erik’s profile. 

She is shorter than most women he’s seen here, five foot nothing, and her dark hair is twisted into an intricate knot at the top of her head. 

“Your Highness,” she says stiffly, spine straight and narrow under her lab coat, “The Prince is malnourished and emaciated. There is nothing that can be done for him but rest and fluids.”

She pauses, and Erik listens in fascination as her blood sloshes in her body, encased within a cage of metal. It’s deafening. She’s angry, then. 

“His. Internal injuries were more...easily corrected. His collarbone was broken, but we have set that to rights, and staunched the internal bleeding with an artificial clotting agent.”

Erik glances down at the holographic dome encasing T’Challa, an array of touch-sensitive nodules that Erik had seen Shuri work on before her exile, when she was bringing this same body of her brother back to life. 

She’d been spasmodic, machine whirring in tandem with her movements, that horrible click of metal in her blood, laced with venom. 

Erik’s never felt the like, not even today.

The doctor looks at him, and Erik can hear the phalanges in her hand creak as she grasps the railing surrounding T’Challa’s hospital bed.

Cebisa. Her name, that is.

“He is not going to survive,” she says, her voice quick and sharp, and Erik rises to his full height, and places his hand next to hers, jostling the entire bed-frame with strength he cannot control.

“Looks like he’s doin’ fine to me,” he says, and Cebisa shakes her head vigorously. “You’re not listening. He does not eat. He does not sleep. He is  _ dying,  _ Your Majesty, and the blame rests with you.”

Erik’s hand locks around her wrist, and he grinds the finite bones together, just at the distal row crease.

Her body lurches, blood draining from her features, and Erik releases her just as quickly, just to watch her bow over T’Challa’s supine form.

“If you wanted him dead, you should have killed him during Challenge,” she hisses, and Erik spares her life for the sake of T’Challa’s next breath.

-

T’Challa sits up and tries to swing his legs over the side of the bed as soon as his eyes open, and promptly faints, orthostatic.

His hospital habitat beeps indiscriminately, and Cebisa, followed by two nurses aides, stabilize him. 

“You can take him to his rooms,” she says, deftly removing his NG and discarding the tubing in the chute that extends from the wall.

Erik does not hesitate, loathes this room and its sterile order, the routine horror of the atmosphere.

T’Challa is ephemeral when he slides one thick forearm under thighs, the other supporting shoulders.

There’s a fragility here that shouldn’t exist--and if it does, it should be tempered by something different. Something more.

The halls are empty; Erik sees no need for senseless comings and goings, and it also makes his task easier. There’s an elevator comprised of glass--reinforced, but transparent, and Erik’s hair is plaited to his skull, King’s robe’s wide around the Panther neckline.

T’Challa’s head lolls somewhere near his left pectoral, right arm dangling uselessly at his side.

_ He is dying _

Erik’s grip tightens in agitation, a bruise inevitably forming against T’Challa’s flesh, blue-purple against brown.

Erik needs him alive. There was no reason for any of this, unless he’s breathing.

It’s never been about the death.

-

T’Challa is changed.

Never talkative, but always open, he now remains listless. Erik has left him to his meals alone for the past week, and they are sent back untouched, crumbs barely scattered.

It is the first Tuesday of the second week and Erik is restless. 

W’Kabi has organized his men, and, by extension, those of the other tribes, in order to dispatch emissaries and weapons.

They plan to deliver them strategically, and in several remote locations, but Erik can’t go anywhere if the figurehead of the Wakandan state is not by his side.

The U.N will be duly suspicious of such upheaval in the interim of T’Chaka’s death and his son’s ascension, and Erik has never had the patience for diplomacy.

It is T’Challa who speaks. That has been the way of them.

Erik strides past T’Challa’s detail of Dora with little regard for anything but his purpose. One soldier hisses, shrill clank of metal to metal, and Erik rolls his neck against the sharp echo to his senses.

T’Challa’s door swings open soundlessly under his hand.

“Leave.”

The Dora are quicker to obey than before, uncertain of his moods, but they linger on T’Challa, although the Prince makes no effort to meet their gazes.

“It is not yet lunch,” he says, and with his legs curled underneath his body, he looks no more than a boy. The child Erik once thought he might be.

“You ain’t even touch breakfast,” Erik says, and he shrugs off his robe entirely, slings the heavy black fabric over a chair and drags another to face backwards, swinging his legs over top the cushion.

He folds his arms over the backrest and leans forward, close enough to touch.

“Look at me.” 

T’Challa does not move, except for an unconscious sway to the side, and Erik’s eyes glance over the stark contrast of cheekbone to skin.

“Look me in the goddamn face, T’Challa,” Erik grinds out, and T’Challa’s eyes flutter open, unfocused.

“You gonna start eating, or, so help me God--” T’Challa cuts him off, and Erik is startled. “What more can you do to me, Erik?” T’Challa says, plaintive.

“There is nothing you have not taken, nothing you have not destroyed. I wish that--” T’Challa’s breathing is labored, and he slumps forward. Erik connects hands to sternum in an effort to nudge him back upright.

Erik levers strong thighs over top of his chair so that he’s kneeling in front of the Prince, knocking him back on his ass.

“You think I don’t know it’d be easier if you was dead?” Erik asks, and T’Challa laughs, mirthless.

“You were close, though,” T’Challa says, meeting his eyes for the first time. They are still warm, melted in the sun, and Erik squints into the flame.

“I felt it break, you know,” T’Challa says conversationally, and Erik keeps a firm hold to his shoulders, even as T’Challa almost topples over once more.

“It snapped. I have not. I have been unable to break anything, in so long. And then there was the blood. It smells like the moon, you know,” he drawls, “but you must know that already. You must have the scent of it.”

“Is this some kinda fucking game to you?” Erik asks, because of all that he expected of T’Challa, it was never this.

“I want my people safe,” T’Challa says, suddenly, abruptly, vibrant. “There is nothing more sacred.”

Erik laughs, tongue lapping over golden canines. “Finally, we agree,” he says, and T’Challa attempts to dislodge Erik’s grip, only to cause it to tighten when he lets out a high yelp of pain.

One of Erik’s hands falls to T’Challa’s waist, and the other settles around the nape of his neck, just so he can drag those eyes to meet his own.

Erik can feel the jump of obliques underneath his palm, and everything grows stifling. 

T’Challa whimpers, a vulnerable, human sound, and all of Erik’s senses crest, like high tide.

“You feel anymore pain?” Erik asks through gritted teeth, unfamiliar with rising urges.

T’Challa looks away from him and nods no, decisive.

They’re back to not speaking, it would seem. Erik cannot seem to move backwards, and he communicates internally with himself, demands that he step away/step away/step away

But he can only focus on the way T’Challa’s flesh leaps under the brand of his hand.

-

He finds out that the Prince and Princess are secretly in contact on accident. 

T’Challa is mandated to go on walks with his Dora, which he seems to adhere to, as these women are familiar and kind, and would never report to Erik the disparaging things the Prince is sure to say about him.

T’Challa never walks far, or quickly, even though Erik has given him leave to go all the way to Panther’s Mound, should he so chose. 

They stick mainly to the gardens, congregating in the overhang of flora Erik has not fully catalogued--sweet thorn, he thinks it’s named, when he hears the tell-tale chime of kimoyo beads.

He’s astonished into stillness, which has not happened since he was fourteen and witnessed his first drive-by coming back home from Tune’s old spot.

He can just make out the excited cadence of Shuri’s voice, the familiarity and lack of shock lending credence to what he already knows as fact. This is not the first time.

T’Challa’s voice is animated, falsely so, but it’s a close enough approximation that Erik leans forward to hear it, imagines he can hear the laughter underneath the words.

It is the Dora who see him first, and, to his secondary stupefaction, they form a protective ring around the Prince.

They are implacable, and they meet Erik eye-to-eye, unwilling to break formation, even as T’Challa remains unaware of their shift. 

T’Challa is defenseless like this. Erik can still make out his distinct modulation, soft, yet inflexible.

Every part of Erik’s being longs to beat T’Challa into the very earth, to force the Prince’s blood to evacuate its home and coalesce before him.

He wants to bend over that dying, broken body, one hand clutched tight around T’Challa’s throat.

The vision is visceral.

It terrifies him. The wanting.

-

_ It’s worse at night. You ain’t ever safe, especially when you feel like you are. But, that’s some bullshit, ‘cause the flip side is true too. When you  _ **_know_ ** _ you ain’t safe, there comes the bullet. _

-

He’s suited up when he first watches him sleep.

He likes to exist in this body most of all, the only uncompromising thing this Kingship ever gave him. The rest is territory, a mantle assumed to keep himself viable, but this? This belongs in his blood.

It is an extension of the weapon he made of himself.

He finds comfort within, and around.

T’Challa’s sleep is restless, at best. He curls on the edge of the bed and does not move to provide himself more space.

He did not sleep until four, and will rise again at six, slumped over the bathroom mirror with trembling hands.

He mewls, unencumbered by the night, and the growl that Erik releases in response to the sound is less than primal, subhuman.

T’Challa wakes instantly, hand twisting to curl around his own throat in fear, but Erik has left only emptiness.

-

Cebisa corners him just at the Border, checking in with W’Kabi about the likelihood of using the rhinos as temporary transport.

They are largely ceremonial animals, but Erik believes that at times, an ambiguously traditional approach might appeal to certain masses.

The Americans need flashy weapons and technological stealth. His people in Oakland will require theatrics.

There’s little pomp and circumstance there that does not carry that aura of death, and Erik thinks they’re owed a bit of style in their vengeance.

W’Kabi is slowly becoming amenable to the idea, and Erik has no reason to strongarm him when he can present indisputable facts. 

W’Kabi has been an uncompromising ear since Erik delivered the body of his own father’s murderer.

The thought makes his Suit ripple, just once, across his body and then settle back between the teeth, and W’Kabi looks vaguely amused.

Cebisa, on the other hand, does not. 

She is of the Merchant tribe, and outside of the hospital, her makeup is done in decorative spots of white and orange, adorning stunning cheekbones.

Erik could find her attractive, in another life.

As it is, she is wearing a long dress, orange and rust, and she gathers the bottom of the fabric to sling over her left arm.

“I have taken the Prince’s vitals and blood work, as is habit,” she says, without pretense, something that Erik appreciates a good deal. She is breathing heavily, and the sun is about to set. 

W’Kabi adjusts his long blanket-covering to settle more squarely against his shoulder.

“I will take my leave, Highness,” he says respectfully, and Erik falls into step beside the doctor, black t-shirt incongruent with Wakandan fashion.

“He has yet to gain weight,” she says, “but, more importantly, he’s an insomniac. He is of no use if he is more or less intoxicated due to a lack of REM,” she explains, and Erik rubs at the back of his neck.

“I ain’t his mother,” Erik says, curt. “You make sure he’s sleepin’, then. Drug him, sedate him, I don’t give a fuck. Just don’t bother me.”

Cebisa snorts and widens the space between them, all the same. Her wrist was in a sling for two weeks after their first encounter.

“The Prince is yours, my King. You have spared his life and attached his to your own.” Cebisa weighs her next words carefully, and Erik watches as the sun drains from the sky, a flaxen blanket to settle beneath the earth.

The Suit descends and amplifies the view.

-

The next time, Erik makes his presence known when T’Challa startles awake, seated in an armchair made of the malleable twist of woodwork and vibranium.

The Suit covers all but his face, and T’Challa’s breath sounds relieved after he first wakes from his nightmare.

“Y-you had your own blood,” T’Challa says, after a thick moment, voice slurred, “on your hands. From when I clipped your face.”

The wood crumbles into dust under his handling, but the vibranium remains unblemished. 

“When I yielded, and you touched me,” T’Challa murmurs, almost asleep once more, “I thought it might kill me. Is that not funny? I thought that touch would kill me.”

T’Challa rolls to face him, sheet tightening over the sinuous curve of his body. Erik stands and crosses to the edge of T’Challa’s bed, air passing just between both parties.

“I knew how to die,” T’Challa murmurs, and he makes that same soft sound he made when first Erik startled him into wakefulness. 

This time, Erik’s hand hovers just over his brow, and he stays.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the trash bin lives for comments like garbage


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it gets rough
> 
>  
> 
> [romance.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH4bfu2f6I8)

T’Challa talks in his sleep.

If it were Erik, he’d be more concerned about the practice, but T’Challa’s never had anything to fear from the people around him.

It gets Erik spoiling for a fight, the idea of instinctive safety.

T’Challa is alert at all times. He’s _aware,_ but that’s different from wariness. That’s separate from smelling the blood on your own back.

The Suit materializes at that, connected to Erik’s nervous system and desire to maim.

He’s in the middle of a meeting with the council, but mainly with Uuka, the ambassador from Jabariland, and the man is as big as Erik himself, with one long, jagged scar slicing cleanly through a ruined left eye.

He is covered in furs despite the heat emanating from the bay window behind him, and his hands are gnarled from what looks like back breaking labor.

Erik’s own hands are ruined, callused and misshapen in places, and he holds them loosely against his thighs, through sheer will.

“You don't want our tech, I got that,” Erik says, and Uuka inclines his head, slow to respond.

“We share land, though,” Erik says, and W’Kabi nods alongside him. “And y’all gonna need the might of Wakanda when the war visits your front door.”

Uuka leans forward, placing those weathered hands against his armrests. “Is that a threat, Panther?”

Erik’s entire body hums with the kill, and the Suit remains at the edge of his consciousness, ready to protect at any cost.

It’s W’Kabi that stands first, angling his body slightly in front of Erik’s, as if he can sense the many ways that this could go south.

“Lord Uuka. The King speaks honestly. There is nothing for you but ruin if you do not consider our terms.”

Erik is silent.

Uuka maintains his stance, and Erik slides forward so that he rests on the edge of his seat, coiled and ready to spring.

“The Jabari will not be party to a fool’s errand, Panther,” Uuka says, and Erik snarls, startling the representatives from the remaining three tribes.

“You got an obligation to your people,” Erik says, “but it’s that pride that stops you. Hope that pride’s enough to keep you from bending the knee when they burn down your door.”

It’s too much, and Erik knows it is, but the time for pretense is long past.

Uuka is already rising from his chair, and Erik grins, bloodthirsty to the last.

-

T’Challa is awake that night, and Erik is startled by the clear timbre of his voice in the dark.

Erik allows the mask to dissipate from his skull, hair plaited back in three, tight rows.

“They tell me you and Lord Uuka fought in the Throne Room today,” T’Challa’s voice holds more than a little regret, and Erik’s chest tightens in rage.

“They tell you when I stop to shit, too?” Erik asks, and there’s a heavy pause where he thinks maybe T’Challa won’t say anything more.

“I didn’t think to ask,” T’Challa says dryly, and Erik snorts before he thinks better of it. “I’ll tell ‘em to keep you updated. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on the highlights.”

T’Challa rolls onto his back, and then sits upright. He pauses in the transition, and Erik knows he’s grown light-headed from the way he reaches for his temples before dropping his hands back into his blanket.

“Jabari are very. Proud,” T’Challa says haltingly, and Erik laughs again, this time like diamonds.

“I got that. Pride ain’t gonna feed his people. Ain’t gonna keep his King alive,” Erik says, and he sighs, deep from his stomach.

T’Challa is silent, and Erik steals a glance at him. His knees are curled into his chest, and he looks small in the center of his bed, liable to disappear.

“What?” Erik says, and he’s at T’Challa’s side quicker than a blink.

T’Challa flings himself away, an instinct borne of protection, and smacks the back of his head against the headboard.

Erik curls his hand around the spot of injury and T’Challa rests there, a temporary truce.

T’Challa sleeps shirtless, and he fiddles with his bedclothes, wincing at the pulsations of pain Erik can scent running through his blood.

“I would tell him that, then,” T’Challa says, and the density of his curls feels strange against Erik’s gloved skin. Like a layer of membrane between himself and the source.

“Jabari pride can move mountains,” T’Challa says, and he raises his head so that Erik’s fully supporting its weight. “It also creates them.”

It takes T’Challa a long time to sleep that night, and even longer for Erik to leave.

-

Lord Uuka loses a finger to their battle, and Erik thinks it’s less than he deserves. Cebisa wants to re-attach it, as a sign of good faith, but Erik makes eye contact with the bloodied bandage and smiles, canines catching the dwindling light.

“Leave that shit to him and his God,” Erik says, smiling, bowed at the waist. “Glory to Hanuman,” he offers, and Lord Uuka nods once before bowing as well.

“You will have our support,” Uuka reiterates, and Erik raises a brow. “And your men?”

Uuka grins, and Erik thinks it wouldn’t matter if he had no hands at all.

-

It is two weeks before the Jabari King makes his way down the mountain and into Wakandan mainland.

Erik is prepared this time, and W’Kabi watches him warily, robes slung over both shoulders.

“Panther King!” He bellows, furs dragging against the vibranium floor, a dull, metallic pull exacerbated by the ivory sewn into the fabric.

“I have come to confirm that we will stand alongside you, in this war you so anticipate,” The King says, and Erik’s smile is almost feral.

“Ape-King,” Erik says, as advised, “it’s a guarantee. Better get your boys ready,” he adds, and the King slings a gregarious arm around Erik’s shoulder, some inches taller than him.

“And where is the Prince? I am sure he’s wise counsel to take, even after a defeat in ritual combat,” The King winks, and Erik is momentarily nonplussed.

T’Challa is sequestered where he always is, has not stepped foot in the Throne Room since Erik pried the mantle of Kingship from his bloodied hands.

“Readin’, probably,” Erik says, recovering quickly, and W’Kabi inclines his head in Erik’s direction. Erik gives a short nod and controls the visceral urge to snarl.

-

W’Kabi returns with T’Challa two steps behind him, and it’s strange, off-putting, even, to see him dressed and in his arena.

T’Challa is swallowed by his clothes, and Erik has to look away at the delicacy that surrounds the would-be King.

T’Challa seems to notice, and he draws himself up to his full height, neck thrown back.

“M’Baku!” He says, and there’s more vigor in his voice than Erik has heard since the night they first met.

M’Baku rises from his seat to hug T’Challa, and Erik watches as the entirety of T’Challa’s frame is swallowed whole, disappearing into nothingness.

His growl is so loud that the windows vibrate and the echo cycles throughout the room, and his own head.

Every gaze comes to meet his own, but he refuses to stand down, eyes trained on the Jabari King.

M’Baku laughs after a moment, long and deep. “I will not harm your War Prize, Panther-King,” M’Baku says, and T’Challa smiles as well.

Erik searches T’Challa’s face but finds nothing of what he’s looking for. That is, to say, he finds nothing at all.

It seems that M’Baku considers the matter all but settled by his ambassador, and now it is expected that he be entertained by the Royal House.

That’s got nothing to do with him, Erik thinks. That belongs to that life T’Challa wants back so bad.

Erik’s running out of time.

-

The night is already ruined when dusk falls.

Erik destroys the interior of the King’s Suites, a veritable tornado that it is someone’s unfortunate job to clean. The only things left untouched are made wholly of vibranium, and not for lack of trying.

His bed is shattered into splinters, and he cannot _think_

That scent bleeds through every pore, and he thinks of Cebisa’s advice. He’s more harm than good like this, but he goes for his nightly vigil regardless, knuckles stained red with blood.

He should’ve shattered bone.

He should have lost his mind.

T’Challa is asleep.

He’s curled in the middle of the bed, which is so unlike his normal sleeping arrangements that Erik loses the thin thread of control he’s been carefully maintaining.

T’Challa comes awake for the assault, and Erik hovers above him, both hands pressed into the bedding on either side of his pillow.

For a moment, all Erik can hear is the frantic clip of T’Challa’s heart, bruised in his chest.

“It’s you,” Erik grits out, canines elongated. They’re tipped in gold, the most expensive thing he owned, until now.

“The moon,” Erik says. “You made me like this.”

T’Challa’s eyes widen, but it’s too late, and he doesn’t move away, chest heaving.

Erik’s bare hand catches in T’Challa’s curls, decadent under his palm. He drags T’Challa’s head back until he can scent at the vulnerable arch of his neck.

“You have fun with your King?” Erik asks, nastily, and T’Challa whimpers, unable to speak, voice clicking in his throat as he attempts to swallow.

“You miss that? Something about that big dick, huh?” Erik spits, and T’Challa squirms, back arching.

“I coulda killed you. Should’ve thrown your ass over that cliff, your mama and your sister screaming for your life,” he continues, and T’Challa shudders as Erik presses _down,_ dick rubbing right up against T’Challa’s abdomen.

It’s a brand, and Erik feels a vindictive satisfaction from the friction. T’Challa is a strange dichotomy of soft, yet firm, and Erik moves his hands so that they span T’Challa’s ribcage.

T’Challa hauls in his air, desperate, mouth wide and panting.

“You should have,” T’Challa says, and his eyes are bright. “I w-want you to,” he hiccoughs, voice dry and strained.

Erik reaches between them, dragging the sheet away and casting it onto the floor. He realizes now, he was wrong. T’Challa sleeps in the nude.

It’s jarring, really, when the heady scent of blood and moon are making a racket, clamoring for his attention.

T’Challa turns his face away, and Erik can feel the rising flush from his face.

“Don’t you hide from me,” Erik says, and he shoves his way in between T’Challa’s naked legs, pushing them so widely apart that T’Challa makes a new sound from the strain.

“He wouldn’t break you,” Erik says, and he reaches down to hook his hands underneath T’Challa’s kneecaps, shoving both legs to rest against the Prince’s chest.

T’Challa’s gasp is more like a gurgle, a sob, and Erik laughs loudly.

“You want the King’s blessing?” Erik asks, and he seals his mouth right over T’Challa’s hole with no preamble, just the hot press of suction in this slice of no-time.

T’Challa wails, and his legs are already quivering, a result of T’Challa’s lowered stamina.

“What’s that? Speak up,” Erik says, mouth wet. T’Challa’s dick is hard, bobbing against his lower abdomen with a tautness that belies his silence.

“I was. I was wrong,” T’Challa gasps, “there was more you could do,” he says, and Erik rubs the pad of his thumb against the softened skin.

“You’re doin’ it right with me, baby,” Erik grins, heart pumping rapidly. “Got your legs open, don’t you?”

T’Challa’s eyes are unblinking, the tips of his fingers bloodless from the grip he’s got on his thighs.

Erik goes back down, flat on his abdomen, the hard line of his own dick quickly becoming problematic. T’Challa makes those whimpering sounds again, choked off tears that Erik finds unbearably arousing. The thought that T’Challa’s open and wet like this, slicked and dripping from his tongue.

Erik curls his index inside, right next to his own tongue, and the sound T’Challa makes is criminal.

“E-Erik,” he cries, and Erik grunts. He can’t remember the last time T’Challa said his name aloud. “That’s right,” he murmurs, and T’Challa’s legs widen further, to the point of probable pain.

Two now, and Erik’s got his fingers soaked, the sheets beneath T’Challa’s ass are damp, and he bites gently into the furl, just enough to make T’Challa mewl, helpless.

He scissors the digits wide and holds, just so he has time to climb to his knees and get a good look at T’Challa’s face.

It’s wet, lips swollen and bitten, and he looks lost, eyes unfocused. He meets Erik’s gaze head on, and that scent makes a resurgence.

“C’mon,” Erik hisses, and the dark is more fragile than it’s ever been, tempered by this roiling thing between them.

“Tell me what you think,” Erik laughs, eyes roaming down that firm, brown skin, hot to the touch and his to defile.

His own dick juts out proudly, wet at the tip and curved to the left, too big for T’Challa to take comfortably.

He leans down, head at the juncture of T’Challa’s neck and shoulder, air coming out hotly as he rubs the sticky crown up against T’Challa’s sensitive opening.

T’Challa’s breath catches, and Erik inhales the citrus of fear, a automatic response.

“If you d-do this,” T’Challa says, voice unsteady, “there is nothing left,” he says, and his hands have not moved from his legs.

Erik pushes forward, inexorable, and T’Challa sucks the first two inches on down, a dark, hungry, cavern.

T’Challa’s mouth drops wide, a poisoned well, and Erik covers it with his own, biting on thick flesh until he can suck liquid vibranium right up inside his own mouth.

T’Challa loses his grip entirely when Erik shoves in to the hilt, on spit and friction, and T’Challa is sobbing now, great, big gasps for air.

Erik blankets him underneath his bulk, and pumps forward, casually.

“Does it hurt?” Erik demands, and T’Challa’s hand curls tentatively in his hair, clutching the bottom of his locs.

T’Challa makes bitten off, almost-soundless mewls, and Erik can feel the ridge of his dick, harder than before, as it rubs against Erik’s scars.

Erik leans to the left and bites down on T’Challa’s neck, gnawing until blood rises to the surface and T’Challa’s body goes limp.

“You just as hard as me, Your Highness,” Erik spits, dragging backwards until just the tip is enclosed, spits on a free hand and smears it on as much of his dick as he can wrap around.

“Let me come,” T’Challa whispers, and Erik laughs, again.

“Beg me for it,” Erik says, conversationally, and T’Challa thrashes from side to side, even as Erik picks up the pace, fucking him with slow, even, pumps of dick.

He tangles both of T’Challa’s wrists in one hand, just to hear the bones grind.

His neck is bleeding.

“Let me, Erik, please,” T’Challa says, plaintive, broken. “F-fuck me til I come,” he says, and his body sags, even as he grinds his ass down on Erik’s thrusts.

He’s probably torn, Erik thinks mildly, but T’Challa’s face is open once more, devoid of artifice, and Erik swipes his thumb across the pre-come on the head of his dick, and T’Challa comes just like that, cock spurting over his belly and balls, trickling down to where he’s still speared open.

Erik makes that involuntary snarl once more, and then he’s snapping his hips, bucking into T’Challa until he registers the dull thump of his head smacking wood.

He drags them out of range of the headboard, but there’s almost no need. He bites down on the other side of T’Challa’s neck, making a symmetrically identical wound as he spills, hot and heavy into Wakanda’s favorite son.

Erik doesn’t bother moving, crushing T’Challa into the bed, and only thinks about pulling out when T’Challa’s hands casually explore the raised bumps on his back.

“Like everything else,” he finally answers, but Erik no longer remembers the question.

-

_It ain’t go away, after. Thinking back on it, I don’t think I ever figured it would._

-

Erik presses a thumb to the largest bruise on T’Challa’s neck, just so he can savor the inhalation of pain that he makes every time Erik places pressure there.

T’Challa’s head falls to the side, hanging limp under Erik’s ministrations.

It’s lunchtime. The sun keeps shining.

“Only the Royal bloodline can scent it,” T’Challa says, after awhile, answering unasked questions. “When you became Panther,” he continues, “it only grew stronger.”

T’Challa turns to face him after a moment, naked in his armchair, the way Erik likes, bruised from head-to-toe.

He can smell him, right now.

“It’s in y’all’s blood?” Erik asks, tense.

T’Challa laughs. “How else do you think you found all of that vibranium? What else could have helped you find Wakanda when you were in flight?”

Erik’s back tightens, and so does his grasp around T’Challa’s neck.

He'd sniffed it out.

Like a dog.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this may be longer than intended


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. shit

Everything changes, and nothing at all.

Erik likes his space, always has. But he’s been filling his time with T’Challa, and now he’s filling T’Challa himself, and there’s something unsettling about not having him easily accessible.

There are very few obstacles in his way at this point, settled with the support of the Jabari, and all he needs is to ensure that the nearby nations will have nowhere but Wakanda to turn to for aid in the advent of war.

W’Kabi is unsurprisingly organized for a man tasked with the first line of defense of a sovereign nation, but even Erik is shocked at the speed with which all factors come together.

There’s only the matter of T’Challa left.

T’Challa’s too weakened to travel, much less endure the crippling public engagements that are about to become their bread and butter.

It angers him, the need for others, the loose ends, and so he doesn’t sit vigil any longer, comes into T’Challa’s apartments in full Suit, claws extended.

T’Challa’s in only his robe, poring over a book, hunched at the large vibranium-laced desk in the corner of his room.

T’Challa stiffens out of habit, and Erik watches him relax, turning his neck over his shoulder just enough to acknowledge Erik’s presence.

“Am I interrupting,” Erik says, “or are you just too damn busy to speak?”

He knows it’s petulant, but there’s nothing in this architectural marvel of a castle that understands what he’s up against, except maybe this man in front of him.

T’Challa stands, his book slipping closed.

“It is hard to tell what you want at any given time, my King,” T’Challa says, and what makes it worse, is that Erik can’t find a shred of mockery in the sentiment.

“I want this shit done,” Erik says, collapsing onto the edge of T’Challa’s bed, freshly made like he goes anywhere but here.

“And you,” Erik says, and he twists, moving too quickly for the human eye, until he’s got T’Challa’s wrist in his hand, and his body slung over Erik’s lap.

T’Challa’s trembling with the suddenness, eyes wide in his face. His cheekbones are sleek lines carved into his skin, and Erik runs his thumb across one absently.

T’Challa’s head tilts into his touch, imperceptible, and Erik hums thoughtfully. “What do you want, sweetheart?”

T’Challa’s tongue runs over his bottom lip, and Erik stiffens right on up in his pants, thick against the swell of T’Challa’s ass.

Erik drags him closer with two big palms on prominent hipbones, and T’Challa shakes his head.

“What does it matter,” T’Challa asks, and Erik’s angry. He shoves T’Challa’s robe off, watching it puddle around his wrists to slide to the floor.

T’Challa shivers under the assault, suddenly bare, and Erik drinks in the sight of him, naked and warm. He’s got Erik’s marks littering his body, bites on those sharp hipbones, and Erik flattens his palm on his waist just to connect his digits to the fingerprints he left behind.

T’Challa’s breathing is shallow, and Erik slides one hand up T’Challa’s defined abdomen, past his sternum, all the way up to his neck.

He rests his hand there, proprietary, and T’Challa’s body is taut on top of his own.

Erik’s eyes dart down to where T’Challa has hardened, dick sweet and dark, tip already beaded with clear fluid. It’s thick, pointed straight at the sky.

Erik smiles, and taps his fingers against T’Challa’s collarbone.

“That’s what you want, right there,” Erik says, and T’Challa turns his head. “You gon’ say it, though. This what you want.”

Erik’s dick is uncomfortable against the zipper of his pants, tight and chafed.

T’Challa’s chest is heaving, and Erik doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more pleasing sight. “Just take me, Erik,” T’Challa pleads, like he always does when they do this.

“Be too easy,” Erik quips. “You know me, baby. I love a challenge.”

Erik’s fingers close around his neck entirely, refreshing the circlet of bruises Erik has already made.

T’Challa’s breathing slows, instantly, and his eyes fall to half-mast. Erik loves him like this, almost at peace, eyes barely focused.

“That better?” Erik says, and T’Challa’s hands come up to tentatively rest on his biceps.

Erik admires the way they can’t reach around their width, before he flips them, one hand still crushingly tight around T’Challa’s throat.

He can feel the strained click of T’Challa’s dry swallow under his palm, and he smiles, leaning down to press a kiss into that open mouth.

“Wanna breathe some?” Erik pulls back, and listens to T’Challa drag in mouthful after mouthful of air, legs in a decadent V.

His dick is achingly hard, and Erik slaps it to the side, just once, to hear T’Challa wail.

“You like that?” Erik asks, and T’Challa nods, eyes large and wet. “Tell me what you like, then,” Erik says, and T’Challa’s legs quiver as he draws them up to his own chest.

“I like it like this,” T’Challa says, shame lacing his words. “It is like. Death,” he offers, and Erik reaches down to smack his hole with three flat fingers, rage rising all over again.

T’Challa takes it sweetly, as in all things, hole trembling under the assault. Erik does it again just to watch him press into the abuse, hips swiveling downwards of their own accord.

“They know this about you?” Erik says, unzipping his pants with one hand.

“You love bein’ naked and fucked up, fucked open, in my--fucking--house,” Erik grits out, punctuating the last three words with smacks to T’Challa’s lower thighs.

He can feel the sting in his hand, and the need to see that on T’Challa’s ass is almost too much to bear.

“Turn the fuck over,” he says, and T’Challa scrambles into position, prone, but Erik pulls him up onto hands and knees, just so T’Challa can look back at him with his swollen mouth.

The first smack is loud and it startles T’Challa into compliance. He grunts, once, and fists his hands into the sheets.

“Please,” he says, eyes squeezed shut, and Erik can no longer control the blows, watching them rain down upon thighs and ass, the soft fat of them jiggling long after Erik’s made first contact.

His skin is dark and unblemished, but Erik can see the reddish-tint underneath, a temporary brand.

T’Challa rocks back into the blows, and after awhile, his gasps become wails, and then actual tears, and Erik doesn’t realize he’s chanting something until he finally slows down the volley of spanks.

“E-Erik, fuck me, hit me harder, something. Something. Please, please, please--” the words are almost unintelligible, but Erik has to grab at the base of his dick.

His hand is a firebrand around his flesh, and he’s sweating, still nearly fully-clothed.

He rends his shirt down the middle, uncaring as it flutters down somewhere behind him, and T’Challa collapses forward, landing on forearms.

“Fuck that,” Erik breathes, and he slaps T’Challa’s sensitive ass with his dick, spreading slick-shine across the surface. He delivers the same treatment to his twitching hole, and T’Challa’s answering moan is shameless.

“Yeah, you fucking like that,” Erik says, and he remembers that they’ve graduated to lube, the only thing he almost doesn’t want to bother with when he’s got T’Challa spread like this.

T’Challa doesn’t ask for much prep, doesn’t ask at all, but it’s an easier ride on Erik’s dick and he leans over T’Challa’s quaking body to fumble with the container on his nightstand.

He drops the cap somewhere but he’s got three fingers slick and that’s all that matters. 

T’Challa comes apart on them so easy, parts like butter in the sun, and Erik hisses at the sweet warmth of him, suction-tight.

He’s pressing in because T’Challa’s making those needy little noises again, broken patterns of sound that neither of them bother examining.

“You take my dick so good, you know that,” Erik slurs, and he drops down heavily, pinning T’Challa to the mattress, face-first.

“Yesyesyes,” T’Challa sobs, and Erik grinds in and out, curling his hand around T’Challa’s neck once more so he can use the grip for leverage for his thrusts.

“That’s how you like it. I know, I know,” he croons, and he smiles against T’Challa’s spine as he feels him grinding his wet dick into the covers.

“Shit,” Erik says, “nobody comes on my dick like you,” and that does it, T’Challa’s making bitten-off mewls, murmuring Erik’s name in that drunken haze, and Erik shoots right up inside, and pulls out just to watch his come collect on T’Challa’s rim.

He presses it back within with his thumb, and gently slaps T’Challa’s flank.

“Don’t leak,” he says, and T’Challa’s face is soft in the way it only ever is after this. Erik doesn’t stop himself from reaching out to run his fingers over T’Challa’s bottom lip.

“Keep that shit in there,” he says, and he doesn’t move even after T’Challa nods in acquiescence. 

 

-

_ The shit you love will kill you _

-

Erik takes T’Challa to sleep in his bed.

It’s an afterthought. He likes to fall asleep with his dick snug in T’Challa’s ass, and the Prince burns like a flame, besides.

Erik counts the ribs on each side, pressing into the divots between bone with careful fingers.

The food he eats doesn’t change anything.

T’Challa still talks to his sister, and Erik doesn’t see the point in ruining a good thing. If they keep him in a good enough mood to keep him taking Erik’s dick with no complaints, what is there to fight?

T’Challa wanders the gardens, Dora in close pursuit.

“There is no more time,” Erik hears him say, and Erik’s suit descends without direct command.

-

Erik hunts alone.

There’s a finesse to it, similar in that of hand-to-hand combat, but there isn’t anything like  _ this,  _ the rush of wind and blood he gets from being the Black Panther, the protector of a people he was never meant to know.

There’s nothing to keep him from damning them to the wolves, he thinks, scaling his way through the trees.

It’s here that he listens for his name on the wind, where he is permitted to think about his father’s face. The liminal space between dawn and dusk.

His father had bled out long before he made it up twelve flights of stairs, the elevator broken until next Monday when Tone’s Daddy came to fix it.

He’d looked for Uncle James, after, and for a long time, he figured whatever monster got his Daddy must’ve taken one for the road, too.

Erik thinks about the blood on his hands often. His Daddy’s blood, his own, one and the same.

It’s on that night that he first scents the moon, open and inescapable.

_ N’Jadaka,  _ says the air.

His growl echoes throughout the canopy of trees, violent and shrill, and he thinks that his father would have saved them all.

-

“You and me,” Erik says, two nights later, “are flying to the States tomorrow.”

T’Challa stiffens beside him, but does not reply. 

“You got plans, princess?” Erik says, and T’Challa makes the kind of wail he only provides when Erik is deep in his guts.

“I will not attend with you,” T’Challa says, and Erik is already shifting even as he feels T’Challa brace for impact.

The comforter rips and T’Challa bares his throat in supplication, but Erik has already drawn blood, in a long gash down T’Challa’s side.

“I ain’t know there was a choice here,” Erik says, and T’Challa meets his eyes even though his pupils are enlarged.

“Everything I do, I do for my people,” T’Challa says, and Erik barks out a laugh. “I cannot willingly destroy them,” T’Challa says.

Erik can scent his vibranium-laced blood, and he realizes the smell has become more than familiar.

“You will have to kill me tonight,” T’Challa says, and Erik smells his resolve.

“Thought you was gonna fuck your way to the top, that it?” Erik says, and he presses the edge of a claw just under T’Challa’s jugular.

T’Challa looks pained, and Erik’s surprised to see that he’s crying.

“I am not what you think I am. I did not lie to you, not now, and not. Not in bed,” he stutters, and Erik’s own hand quivers.

“I am not my father. I am not even Wakanda,” T’Challa says, and Erik wants him silenced, torn to pieces.

“I am just myself, and  _ myself _ cannot betray my people,” he says, and his eyes are unguarded, finally, blessedly wide open.

This, Erik thinks, is what it means to die.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *casually increases chapter number* also. i know it seems extra, but thank you for your comments, guys. i was v nervous that nobody would like this, so every comment makes it easier to write them fucking in various nasty ways love Y A L L


	5. Chapter 5

Erik does not kill him.

There’s a moment where he truly thinks he does, that he’s really gone and done the thing that would turn him into verified Wakandan royalty.

What happens is this:

His hand closes around T’Challa’s neck, inflexible and sudden, and T’Challa’s hands come up to grasp Erik’s wrist, on instinct.

It’s very quick, in reality, but time slows to a honeyed still, and Erik watches T’Challa’s hands flutter and then fall, brushing strangely against the tallies on his arms.

He releases involuntarily, but T’Challa is already unconscious, and he’s not sure what to tell the people if he has to report him dead.

He doesn’t need their support but he does need their compliance and nobody wants T’Challa dead.

The affection they hold for their once-king is astounding and mildly sycophantic, Erik thinks.

But T’Challa’s chest is barely rising as Erik remembers that he’s so much more than what he once was, and it’s an easy decision to pick him up so that they can make it to see Cebisa in record time.

-

Cebisa does not talk to him this time.

Her hands are moderately steady but he follows the fine tremble from spine to neck, and Erik doesn’t say anything because she’s got T’Challa encased in the healing dome and it’s soundless in here.

“I can hear him breathin’.”

Cebisa brushes one hand over T’Challa’s brow with a familiarity that’s astounding.

“I ain’t kill him. Could’ve done it before,” he adds, and Cebisa brushes past him. There’s a flurry of buttons, and then a milky veil descends between his view of T’Challa and the insular portion of the dome.

Erik’s hands come up against indestructible glass, and he pounds on it with every ounce of his enhanced strength, and it does not so much as shudder.

Cebisa works around him, but does not begrudge him a chair in the corner, where he watches his hands knit up, knuckles split clean through.

-

Erik is not inflexible. 

He’s single-minded to a fault, with an unmatched success rate due to that focus, but he’s amenable to change.

That is to say, a change in tactics.

The crux of the matter is that he cannot kill T’Challa. There is no political or tactical gain to be made from it, and that also makes his job more difficult.

Cebisa comes to his rooms unannounced, on the third night, and Erik’s studying the edge of his wrist, the one blank space of skin he has remaining on his upper body.

Cebisa is trembling, and Erik meets her gaze from his armchair.

“He cannot  _ walk _ ,” she says, and Erik stands immediately. “Nothing stoppin’ me from carrying him,” he says, but she holds out a hand and clenches it into a fist.

Erik knows that’s a hard no, a full stop, but he presses forward anyway, and is moderately shocked to watch a needled blade descend from within her coat sleeve.

She catches it deftly, twining a small hand around the handle, and Erik hates surprises.

He’s never yet underestimated an opponent, and he doesn’t intend to start now.

“It ain’t gotta come to blows,” he quips, and she advances forward, precision point glinting in the shaft of moonlight leaking in from his window.

“I will not give him back to you for you to continue like this,” she says, and Erik smiles, feral. “You got no idea what it is that’s continuing, sweetheart.” He pauses, allowing his claws to elongate, just enough to spike that fear-scent.

“I love a good battle as much as the next man,” Erik says, “but you don’t come outta this looking good. You don’t leave this room.”

Cebisa flips the blade and catches it on the upswing, vibranium facing outward. She holds it like a dagger, and Erik listens for the metal shiver as the Panther enhances his vision.

“Then I do not survive,” she says, and Erik thinks about how easy it will be to kill her. Her dagger will do nothing, and he doesn’t bother considering it.

It’ll be quick, and in the spirit of mercy, relatively painless on her part. But to what end? Erik does not relax his stance, but he tips his head to the side, questioning.

“What’s the point? I’m still gonna take him,” Erik says, and she laughs, a hysterical-sounding sob.

“Then you kill me. And you kill my replacement. And you kill her replacement. And you keep killing until we are all dead,” she says, inching to the left.

Erik snarls, an almost-unnoticed sound, and Cebisa continues, prudently dancing around him. “Or I will allow you to take him. But you will  _ never _ ,” she pauses, “harm him like this again.”

Erik straightens, moving forward with preternatural speed. “I ain’t ever gonna not be me, and right now, that means I’m your King.” Cebisa stumbles backwards, and Erik steadies her, gripping the wrist that’s supporting the dagger.

It trembles loose of her hand, landing on the marble with discordant chime.

“Now go get me what’s _ mine _ ,” he says, and when he releases her, she stumbles backwards, off balance, the brand of his palm around her wrist.

“You will have to murder the Dora, too,” she says, even though her voice is tight with pain. “I want a blood-oath. That you will not harm him.”

Erik is done with this conversation. His patience is enduring but not infallible, and Cebisa seems to sense that.

She ducks, whipcord sharp, snatching the dagger into her left hand. Erik is interested, and watches as she slices a clean line onto her right palm, a welt of blood rising from the opening.

She flips the dagger and catches it in mid-air, hilt pointing in Erik’s direction. 

“Before it clots,” she says, and Erik takes it from her with two fingers. Time is dilated; it seems interminable as the suit travels back between the teeth, and he makes a clean incision, deep enough to remain open for a few seconds prior to healing.

He engulfs her palm in his hand, and the scent ripens, fine-tipped. She pulls away as soon as she’s able, and Erik admires the smear of red on his hand, intermingled with the unblemished skin underneath.

“You may not live by honor,” Cebisa says, tucking her hand underneath an armpit, “but you do abide by your word.”

It’s up to Erik to follow her back to the medical wing.

-

_ Only difference between a killer and non-killer is that one of those motherfuckers ain’t done it yet  _

-

T’Challa seems surprised to have survived, which sets off a strange itch under Erik’s skin.

He’s too weak to walk, as Cebisa promised, and Erik thinks that perhaps a slow decline is a death, all the same.

“I still will not go,” he says, even as Erik pushes the soup closer to his hands.

T’Challa makes no moves toward it, propped up in the center of Erik’s bed. The sheets are onyx, heavier than average due to the vibranium stitched alongside fabric, and T’Challa can hardly move them.

“Don’t matter,” Erik says, dropping the spoon into the mixture. “All I need to do is get you there.”

T’Challa shakes his head vigorously, and the movement causes his hands to quiver in fatigue. “Let us say you get me there. What is to stop me from exposing all of this?”

Erik steadies his hand, but not quickly enough, because T’Challa cries out as Erik moves, turning his face into his pillow in fright.

His hands are clutching the covers, the same way he does when Erik’s seated so deep inside him, and it’s the juxtaposition that does it.

“I’m not gonna fucking touch you, goddamn!” Erik stands and the bowl quivers and tips over.

Everything moves very quickly.

It’s too fast for T’Challa’s health, but better than sustaining burns, and they end up at the foot of the bed, Erik standing as the bowl makes one final spill onto sheets that are still warm from T’Challa’s rest.

T’challa’s whole body is vibrating in Erik’s hold, even though his arms are slung around Erik’s neck for balance.

T’Challa’s breathing too heavily for what the moment permits, and Erik doesn’t know where to put him. There’s a set of rooms next door they can utilize, but T’Challa’s in no condition to move.

“I ain’t gonna kill you,” Erik says dumbly, and he can feel T’Challa breathing into his neck, warm and wet.

“F-Forgive me,” he says, “if I do not quite believe you.”

Erik’s arms tighten and the sound that T’Challa emits is undefinable. “I took a blood-oath,” Erik says, careful to start speaking as they walk, so T’Challa doesn’t try and fight his way down out of surprise.

He’s in a long sleep shirt, coming up just to mid-thigh, and Erik focuses on the thick give of his flesh, the pretty way they jostle as Erik walks.

“I ain’t gotta prove myself to you,” Erik says, transferring T’Challa’s weight onto one forearm so that he can open the next suite of rooms.

The Dora are unobtrusive, as he has directed them to be, but he can tell that sometimes T’Challa looks for their familiar sight, peers around corners and alcoves where they used protect.

The knob is chilled to the touch, but the room is more inviting than Erik’s, decorated with the deep purple hue that represents Wakandan prowess.

“I would rather die if I am to die, than play these games,” T’Challa says, and Erik pauses, poised to set him underneath sheets.

“I’m not playing no games with you,” Erik grits out, carefully arranging his body. T’Challa’s shirt rides up at the upper thigh, and Erik glimpses the tight curls beginning to make up the base of his dick. T’Challa sucks his lower lip into his mouth in embarrassment.

“You think I don’t like that?” Erik says, astounded, and T’Challa takes a deep breath and looks down at his lap, tugging at the insufficient fabric.

“Why you think I always want you naked?” Erik asks, and he sits on the edge of the bed, far enough away that T’Challa’s shoulders relax minutely.

“You sitting in my shirts like that? Smelling like you do?” Erik grinds short nails into his palm, and T’Challa squirms.

Erik can scent him now, that warm honey of arousal. 

“I ain’t gonna fuck you up like that,” Erik says slowly, and T’Challa nods, after a moment. “No mistake, sweetheart, you got a job to do and it’s gonna get done, but you bein’ dead was never part of the plan.”

It takes a lot to get that out, and T’Challa does not acknowledge it, still shivering in the cool night air.

“You still want me to touch you though, don’t you?” Erik says, and his voice drops even as he knocks T’Challa’s legs open a bit, just enough to hear that intake of breath.

“We cannot keep on like this,” T’Challa says as he looks up, eyes wide on Erik’s face.

Erik moves, hovering above T’Challa in order to lean down and scent at his neck, deep and prolonged. T’Challa whines and Erik smiles, porcelain brushed against brown.

“Why not? Everybody happy. And you look damn pretty when you whining on my dick like that,” Erik whispers.

“This is wrong,” T’Challa says, but he doesn’t move as Erik slides his palms right up those thighs, knocking them wide until the hem of his shirt exposes that sweet dick.

“See,” Erik says, dragging one knuckle against T’Challa’s hole, “Why’s everything gotta be right to you?”

-

It’s become automatic, Erik realizes.

T’Challa is asleep, which comes far and few between, and Erik’s preparing for the day, traditional robes slung carelessly over back of a chair.

He’s naked, one leg curled underneath that concave stomach, and Erik stops to look at him as the sun crests.

It’s obscene, really. Of all the things that have been done and that will be done, this is the worst.

T’Challa is right about that, though it solves nothing to let him know.

He’s still shiny in between his thighs, hole almost exposed to the open air. Both arms are shoved underneath his pillows, and his neck is still bleeding sluggishly from a particularly savage bite.

Erik settles down behind his ass, both hands on his hips just he can slightly raise it into the air.

“Like a goddamn peach,” Erik mutters, and T’Challa’s coming awake already, panting in his sleep.

He works the tip of his finger in first, and when he finds it still slick with come and lube, he adds the second, just to watch T’Challa gasp.

“Erik,” he moans, and Erik smiles, his free hand curving gently around T’Challa’s throat.

“Morning, beautiful,” Erik says, and T’Challa squeezes soft brown shut. He hates this most of all. 

“I’m tryna get goin’, you know, and you over here teasing me. Showing off that tight ass,” Erik says, “and this, right here,” he adds, punctuating the hole with two sharp drags against T’Challa’s prostate.

T’Challa’s mouth falls open and his eyes fly wide, and Erik’s hard so quickly he might’ve sprained something.

“See,” Erik says, and he pauses to wet his fingers in that little container T’Challa’s so good at procuring, “you love when I fuck you.”

T’Challa’s hips are grinding sweetly, humping back into Erik’s three fingers, and he thinks he could stay here all day.

“You love bein’ ass up for your King. I got your home, got your throne and I got  _ you, _ ” he hisses, with a vicious twist.

T’Challa whines, loud, and he struggles to push himself up.

“I-Is it not yet enough, E-Erik,” he gasps, even as he swivels his hips. “Not til you say it,” Erik says, and that burning place in his chest intensifies.

“You have already won,” T’Challa gasps, and then, “please, then. You know I am hard for you, and I’m a-already wet for you,” he whispers.

Erik groans, dick already thick against his own thigh.

“Fuck,” he says, and T’Challa’s making pained, hungry noises even as Erik’s hand slaps his ass with every thrust.

“Close,” Erik says, “tell me exactly who you like to fuck you.” It tastes like ash when he says it, but now that he’s asked, he has to hear it. He’s got to hear T’Challa whimper and confess it, lips bitten and swollen, face wet with tears and desperation.

It’s overwhelming, this desire to own, and it burns differently than what was necessary Before.

“You know it is you,” T’Challa says, voice barely above a whisper. “It is always you that I want to fuck me,” he says, and the bone-deep satisfaction Erik feels makes him understand that he’s never felt it before now.

-

_ By the time you realize you too close, you already dead _

_ - _

It’s Cebisa that gives him the idea, in the end.

She’s more cordial to him because he’s kept his oath thus far, and he can see the dark circles dimming from underneath her eyes.

She’s got no great love for him, but she’s resolute in her opinions and beliefs, and so they communicate better than most other people Erik has come in contact with.

She’s still adamant that T’Challa can’t be moved, and while Erik has come to accept that, it’s still not an option, which he doesn’t bother reiterating. 

“You would have him die to prove a point,” she says, even as she cleans her workstation, eyes focused on the sterilized glass under her hands.

“I got no good reason for him to die,” Erik says, and she waves a hand negligently. “That does not stop you from trying,” she points out, and Erik laughs.

“If I want anybody dead, there ain’t never been a question about the thing getting done,” he says, “so, believe me. I got no point in killing him.”

Cebisa pauses and acknowledges the fact. 

“Then you are going to need to think up a new strategy,” she says. “Because you will not reach anyone this way.”

Erik leans back against the counter, metal digging into his lower spine, chafing strangely over his scars.

Alright, then. The mountain can come to Mohammed.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol let's be frank, this is gonna be longer than seven chapters but giving myself goals has always helped me find ways to achieve them (kinda like someone we love to hate)


	6. Chapter 6

The morning of, Erik takes him early.

It’s a primal instinct, and one he doesn’t bother examining too closely, much less fighting.

T’Challa’s body rests squarely in Erik’s space, taking up more than his fair share of the bed, however inadvertently.

It’s astounding that he’s this tactile in sleep, when he’s wary of every movement Erik makes when he’s conscious.

Erik looks down on him, face young and exhausted, even in the midst of rest.

He’s a poor sleeper, clinging to Erik’s chest and arms during nightmares.

Erik knows a thing or two about that, and it’s unspoken between them.  T’Challa rides them out by his side, and Erik does not curl away.

Now, Erik turns him to rest fully on his side, and drags two fingers down the cleft of his ass, where he’s fluid and open from last night.

T’Challa squirms once and falls still. Erik thinks about the pliancy of his body, the safe way Erik sinks home.

His fingers tease at the opening, dipping in slightly just to pull back.

He doesn’t realize that T’Challa is rocking back against the slight intrusion until he speaks, voice morning-soft.

“Insatiable,” he says, and there’s a cadence in his tone that Erik can’t place. It’s unfamiliar but peaceable, and Erik laughs.

T’Challa stiffens at the sound and then his entire body relaxes, curving back into Erik’s chest.

The room is charged and Erik reacts, growling twice underneath his breath.

It makes a blood-tipped sound, and T’Challa’s neck arches backwards on instinct.

He’s already bruised to hell and back, but that doesn’t stop Erik from salivating at the sight of him.

“It’s a fucking shame you so damn stubborn,” Erik says, “because I wanna take this ass with me everywhere.”

T’Challa’s legs curl upwards and then relax, widening in sensory habit.

“You can,” T’Challa says, and Erik pauses in his ministrations, one hand coiled around the thickness of T’Challa’s thigh.

T’Challa pushes himself up to elbows and Erik moves his hand to the small of his back, just over the swell of his ass in order to shove him back down.

“The only place in which we make sense,” T’Challa says, “is here.” He pauses, and Erik watches in fascination as he bites down on that plump lower lip, swelling it even further.

T’Challa spreads his legs wide enough to be purposefully distracting, blatantly obscene, and Erik groans, loud and hungry.

“It feels good, here,” T’Challa murmurs, and Erik watches his hips flex upward, firm ass shaking softly with the motion. “ _You_ feel good, here,” T’Challa adds, quieter, and he mewls when Erik leans forward to part his cheeks and expose his sodden hole to the open air of the room.

“So you do listen when I fucking speak, sweetheart?” Erik says, and he gently blows cool air against the furl of skin, just so he can watch T’Challa ass tighten in surprise.

“I like you under me,” Erik admits, and he spits, pressing the excess right into T’Challa’s hole, and T’Challa hiccups and sighs.

He nudges his thumb alongside his index, and shoves his free hand underneath T’Challa’s abdomen, just so he can slide up and pinch a nipple.

“You wanna be here?” Erik asks, the swift uptick of uncertainty at the end. It wouldn’t stop him, either way, but he wants to know.

He leans down to lick around his fingers, nipping at that flushed rim, and T’Challa’s cry is pain-laced pleasure, and he humps back greedily, bit off _unh unh unhs_ that Erik forces out of him.

“I-I want you in me, Erik, yes,” he whimpers, and Erik hums his acceptance.

-

_It’s the knowing that kills you_

-

T’Challa is stiff and uncertain in his royal best, and he looks up at Erik beseechingly, eyes wide and unblinking.

“A new game?” he asks, a hint of sarcasm in his tone to temper the worry.

Erik adjusts his lapel and turns halfway to face T’Challa, canines flashing dangerously. “We’re having visitors,” he says, and T’Challa’s hands tighten against his armrests.

“Outsiders?” He says, and his body is one taut, lean line that Erik would like to bite into, suckle the flesh until the blood runneth over.

“You told me,” Erik says, picking fabric from in between the teeth of the Panther necklace, “you was too weak to travel.”

Erik smiles, turning away from the full length mirror to face T’Challa.

“And me, thoughtful man I am, decided you deserve a rest.” Erik stalks closer, bending down so their foreheads are touching, T’Challa’s heated skin to his own.

“I brought the problem to the solution,” Erik says, leaning back just enough to press his lips against T’Challa’s temple, more a touch of flesh than anything substantial.

“Do you even realize,” T’Challa says, vibrating in his seat, “the madness you have unleashed? The stupidity of what you have done?”

T’Challa’s eyes have gone glassy, and Erik can tell he can’t see, pupils bogged down with unshed tears.

“You are a fool. You are a fool, N’Jadaka, and your life will be in vain.”

The words hang heavily in the air, and they do not dissipate.

T’Challa’s head whips to the side, neck and flesh cracking simultaneously under the sudden onslaught.

“You don’t know a damn thing about me, as much as you wanna pretend you learned somethin,” Erik hisses, and T’Challa’s blood trickles slowly from the corner of his mouth.

“Your Daddy stole that name right out of my body,” Erik hisses, and T’Challa recoils, but there is nowhere for him to go.

“You ain’t nothing but what they made you. You think you something special because they gave you books and words and morals,” Erik says, “but they made you this kind, selfless, _thing,_ and they made you weak for it.” Erik’s burning, body trembling, and T’Challa’s mouth is slightly agape.

“Worst thing they ever did was make you think you was better,” Erik continues. “Cause, if you better, then that means it’s up to you to do the saving.”

Erik resists the urge to strangle him, even though his cheekbone is already bruised, and Cebisa will see this as breaking his oath and his word, which rankles him in an unfamiliar manner.

“And what’s a hero without distress?” Erik says, and T’Challa meets his gaze unflinchingly. Erik’s alive, in that vibrant way he hasn’t felt since he traced dirty fingernails over the scars they buried his father with.

“C’mon then, Panther,” Erik says. “You come save your people from fucking ruin.”

-

Erik can’t get the entire U.N. delegation to show up to the unexplored plains of Wakanda on such short notice, so he settles for the catalyst that has started everything in the past.

The U.S. ambassador is a white woman, but, while Erik has no qualms with them learning everything there is to know about Wakanda, he won’t have a capitalist, pseudo-fascist perpetrator touch this land.

They send a proxy at his request, a black woman named Sherise Davis who served under President Obama and hold a doctorate in Public Policy from Columbia.

She arrives at lunch, and Erik likes his adversaries off kilter at the start. She’s trembling, her neck bent almost double as she tries to take in the magnificence of a castle that should be mud and straw by the accounts of the developed world.

She’s similarly taken aback by his appearance, but he figured that would be the case. His forearms are exposed, and her dark brown eyes dance over his plethora of scars before finally coming to rest on his face.

“Sir,” she begins weakly, and then clears her voice. She has not been adequately briefed for this job. At most, she was sent to humor a small, poor, nation.

“Your Highness,” Erik says, not so much because he gives a fuck, but because she ought to. “Highness,” she rectifies, “am I. Am I incorrect in assuming that there is--was another King of Wakanda? King T’Challa, perhaps?”

Her speech is halting, as if she’s wary of stepping on cultural toes, and Erik cocks his head to the side and adapts.

“My husband,” he says, and Sherise is very quick to modify her facial expression from outright shock.

“We were unaware that he had. Married. Your Highness,” she says, and Erik smiles, even though he knows it’s more of a grimace.

“Almost a year,” Erik says, and he recollects his four years at MIT, the ruthless way he had ground his accent down to nothingness, painted himself beige and blended into the sea of supremacy.

No more difficult of a lesson to learn than all others before.

“He’ll be happy to meet you,” Erik says, and he reaches out a hand to shake hers before turning to bring T’Challa forward.

T’Challa is sitting just outside of the greeting room, shadowed by the curtains covering the large bay windows in the foyer.

“I will go no further,” he says, head bowed, and Erik jerks him up by the curls he loves so much.

“Then I’ma drag you in there, just like this, and break your back on that vibranium floor,” Erik smiles, dragging his thumb over T’Challa’s Adam’s apple.

T’Challa arches into his touch, mouth falling wide and docile. “You would, would you not?” T’Challa whispers, and there’s something burning in the question that Erik had not thought to look for.

“I told her we was married,” Erik says, ignoring the lightning rod of heat in his groin, “so come and join us, husband,” Erik says, and he runs his thumb over the hastily covered bruise on T’Challa’s cheek.

T’Challa’s face is momentarily inscrutable, and then he stands, swaying in place. Erik steadies him out of habit and they walk out together, T’Challa’s head high and proud.

He wears his name like honor, Erik thinks, and he couldn’t emulate that if he tried.

Ms. Davis rises and then bows, an awkward double attempt that Erik would laugh at if he wasn’t facing the culmination of his entire life in a few short moments.

“King T’Challa and King--” she pauses, and T’Challa smiles broadly, tugging Erik closer. “Erik,” he says, in that soft, disarming way that makes Erik want to bludgeon him to death every time.

“Your husband tells the U.N that Wakanda has much to offer the world at large?” She asks, and she looks positively astonished, eyes tracing the intricacies of their royal house from years and years beyond.

Erik never takes the time to look. There’s nothing here that was offered to him then, and what is left is long dead now.

“My words,” Erik says, and he bites his tongue against the onslaught of Oakland that wants to leak from his mouth. “I stated that Wakanda has the technology and weaponry to arm disenfranchised blacks around the globe,” Erik says, and T’Challa barely keeps still beside him.

He can feel T’Challa’s eyes boring a hole in the side of his face, eyes widened infinitesimally.

He wants to laugh, loud and unfettered, but his blood is pumping double in his skin and she starts to scent a bit like fear.

Her blood is baseline rust, and unencumbered by the legacy of a negligent people, and he barrels forward.

“I’m unsure what it is you mean to say, King Erik,” she stammers, and Erik looks at her derisively. A weaker envoy they couldn’t have chosen.

It’s T’Challa who speaks, even though the words are ready in Erik’s mouth.

“Wakanda is, to put it crassly,” he says apologetically, and Erik’s hand tightens on his thigh in a crushing grip at the idea that T’Challa has anything at all to apologize for, “millenia ahead of the rest of the world in terms of technological advancement.”

Sherise’s smile goes brittle, and she reaches forward for T’Challa’s free hand, the one resting on the slate-colored table between them.

“I appreciate your time,” she says, “and I recognize, just due to this stunning palace, that you’ve got quite a bit more money in your homeland than we’ve thought, which precedes questions concerning your GDP--”

T’Challa’s face is still kind, lashes framed against his cheeks, but Erik has little time for politics.

“You can take that condescending tone and stick it back up your ass where you found it,” Erik says, and T’Challa reaches for his hand underneath the table, gripping it on reflex.

“T’Challa can have his military unit eviscerate you and your boys where y’all stand, and you have the nerve,” Erik says, his chair grinding loudly as he shoves it backwards in order to rise, “to _insinuate_ , that he might be exaggerating?”

He expects for T’Challa to attempt to cajole him into propriety, and while he doesn’t want to be seen beating his husband for touching him when he’s this volatile, he certainly won’t hold back if it comes down to it.

T’Challa is there to ease the news. He’s there to ensure there’s no uprising against Erik’s goals. Complicity is a hell of a drug.

The room is silent for a second, and Sherise’s agents have not moved from the background, but Erik knows every non-motion, and can see that their sidearms are more accessible than before.

“There are many people, most of whom were once a part of the African diaspora, who suffer in bondage and shame,” T’Challa says pointedly, and Erik’s knuckles bleed color from where they are wrapped around the spine of his chair.

T’Challa leans forward, and Erik can see the stark tendons in his neck, cheekbones in sharp relief.

“You have ancestors, Ms. Davis. I am sure this means a bit more to you than it could ever mean to me,” T’Challa says, and Erik shudders against the flash-pan sense of appreciation.

“What is it that you two want?” Sherise asks, eyes darting quickly away from Erik.

T’Challa’s face is evaporated of all life, and Erik smiles, one hand going to cup the back of T’Challa’s neck.

“We don’t want nothing y’all can give us,” Erik says.

“This here’s a reckoning.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. erik has spoken (and this greedy hoe waits for y'all to speak 2)
> 
> find me on the tumblr @brosamigos so we can talk shit and cry


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're at the end of the road.

Sherise takes her Learjet back to New York, where Erik assumes she will disperse the news to Geneva and Vienna accordingly. 

Erik feels. 

Erik doesn’t know what he feels. 

This was the final component to the work his father began, long ago,  and the armaments have been assembled and underway for over half a year. What his father was forced to do under cover of night, Erik has dragged screaming into the light of day.

W’Kabi awaits the order to send Wakandan shuttles to every subjugated corner of every continent. 

M’Baku has contacted him with assurances that when the time for war comes, his people will arrive with no fanfare, but great might. 

Erik holds no doubts there. 

They are a warrior people and that is something he can respect. 

T’Challa is...not quite  _ off _ , but only slightly out of alignment. He leans as if everything has shifted a centimeter left, and he has not compensated for the change. 

Erik longs to know what he’s thinking, but he doesn’t know how to ask—nor if he can face what that truth might resemble. 

As it goes, T’Challa saves him the trouble. 

“Does it bring you peace, now, I wonder?” T’Challa asks that same night, curled as close as he can be without climbing into Erik’s very flesh. 

Erik rolls his eyes heavenward and stares, unblinking, at the intricate scene on the ceiling. 

T’Challa explained it to him once, after Erik had fucked him past the point of walking, and Erik himself had been barely conscious. 

“There, in the corner,” T’Challa points to the upper left hand side of the sloped visage. 

“Is the Panther goddess Bast blessing the first Panther,” T’Challa says, and then, more quietly, “our great-something or other grandfather.” 

Erik flinches at the reminder, not because he puts any stock in cultural mores, but because it’s just another part of his unholy connection to this place. He’ll never be severed from it, and the fault lines are barely functioning. 

He listens regardless. 

“And there,” T’Challa points, “is the First War, with the Jabari,” he says, and Erik follows the battle, the silver carving of a man morphing into a cat, so intricate that Erik can use his enhanced vision to count the whiskers on its face. 

The mouth of the Panther opens into a wide snarl and it charges, leaping over the individual carvings of an entire Jabari army, furs and serrated skin, in order to bite at the jugular of their King. 

“He did not kill him,” T’Challa says needlessly, as if Erik could not guess from the next panel, “but we have never warred with them or any other since.”

T’Challa’s head edges closer to his as he speaks, in an effort to better detail the last section. 

“The Jabari were close to us, and the Panther Mound was created followed the first, and last, Great War.” T’Challa is momentarily silent, and Erik observes the last of the silver characters. 

The First Panther stands above the rest, a spear upheld in his dominant hand. His people have faces that mirror expressions of joy and exhilaration, and as Erik blinks, the entire ceiling shudders and shifts, like winking coins undergoing the domino effect. 

“It is on a timer,” T’Challa had explained. “But this one was always my favorite.”

Erik had grunted, eventually. The Wakandans thrived on false ideals. 

Even now, the ceiling shows the same panels, and Erik watches it flicker as the minuscule battle plays out once again above their heads. 

“At what cost,” Erik counters, “did your God give him peace,” he says, and T’Challa’s eyes slit open, lashes framing his cheeks. 

“Is there a cost too great for peace?” T’Challa says, and he sits halfway upright, sheets pooled around the places where Erik has bitten and bruised his chest, a necklace of desecration. 

T’Challa’s eyes flutter shut as he looks down upon himself, hands coming up to frame his own neck. 

Erik’s scent spikes in response and he pulls T’Challa closer so he can nip at the underside of his jaw. 

“If you gotta ask, then you already know the peace is worth it,” Erik says, and then he shrugs, hand playing in the curls at T’Challa’s hairline. 

“You always reaching for  _ peace _ ,” Erik says slowly, working out the whys in his head. “In a way, ain’t that just as hard? It’s a pipe dream,” Erik says, turning his head to look into T’Challa’s eyes. 

“Somebody always gonna suffer for a dream,” Erik says, and T’Challa nods his head against his pillow. 

There’s something so bright about him tonight, that Erik cups his face, calloused palms smoothing over stubble. 

“What if the suffering is alright, in the end?” T’Challa says, and Erik tugs at him until T’Challa’s body is on top, blanketed over Erik’s wider frame. 

“Depends on who's doing the suffering,” Erik says. “S’always worth it when you got a transference of pain.”

T’Challa grinds down, soft and naked, and tucks his head inside the slope of Erik’s neck. 

Erik feels that hot-burn in his chest and his hands tighten involuntarily, forcing a whimper of unintentional pain out of T’Challa’s throat. 

“Someone always loses,” T’Challa says, “but everyone need not suffer.”

Erik moves his head just enough to settle his teeth at the side of T’Challa’s throat. 

He gnaws gently at the skin, and the sound he’s rewarded with makes his dick pulse with pre-come. 

“How ‘bout this,” Erik says, and he bullies T’Challa’s legs wide enough to raise his knees between them. 

This leaves T’Challa so exposed that he gasps, hiding an embarrassed breath in Erik’s chin. 

“Who loses here,” Erik continues, and he presses index and middle inside of that wet heat, and T’Challa’s toes scrabble against sheets for purchase. 

“W-What is there to lose?” T’Challa says, and Erik moans as he grinds his abdomen against the brand of Erik’s dick. 

“This is something different,” T’Challa says, and he pushes down against Erik’s fingers, wanton and sensual. 

“Goddamn,” Erik breathes, and T’Challa swivels his hips, letting out helpless mewls of pleasure. 

“I need this,” he begs, and Erik flips them, hands shaking as he struggles to aim his way in.

T’Challa reaches down to help, and together they fit Erik inside, and he shoves forward, too hard and too fast.

It’s messier than anytime before; Erik can still feel himself squelching out of T’Challa’s ass with every thrust, and he leans back just enough to look at the hungry swallow of his dick. 

T’Challa’s rim clings to him on every backward drag, and Erik taps his index against his opening teasingly. 

“Bast,” T’Challa says, and then he rocks down harder, eyes blinking back tears. 

“Please. Please, Erik,” he says, licking his lips. “Will you let me feel it?”

T’Challa gasps on a particularly brutal thrust, and Erik spanks the underside of his thigh, dragging both legs up so they’re touching his ears. 

“That’s right, sweetheart,” he says, barely aware of what he’s trying to communicate, not with T’Challa smelling like this, eyes wet and vulnerable. 

He inches his finger in alongside, prying T’Challa’s legs as wide as they’ll go so that he has the necessary space. 

T’Challa opens himself brutally, gasping for air as he jerks his legs agape, and Erik’s shaking so badly he holds onto one of his thighs for balance. 

His index sinks in, wet with come, lube and spit, and T’Challa’s moans are broken things. 

“There has not been a t-time,” T’Challa struggles, “that I have not felt you in me,” he says, and maybe it’s not meant to sound like as much of a relief as it does. 

“I’m right here,” Erik says, and it sounds so frank when he lays it bare like that. 

He pushes his middle finger in as well, briskly, suddenly needy, and T’Challa comes, just like that, untouched, spilling all over his abdomen, leaking down to collect at his sore rim. 

Erik reaches up to pull his hair backwards in order to expose his neck, but all he can do is watch the shades of ecstasy work their way across T’Challa’s face. 

Erik pulls out and spider-walks his way upwards so that his dick is hovering above T’Challa’s slackened expression. He’s coming on that, thick, white spurts from his dick, just so he can watch T’Challa lick his lips and open his mouth, moaning as loudly as he did when he came. 

Erik swipes off the excess with his thumb, panting heavily, and feeds it to T’Challa carefully, watching with dark eyes as T’Challa sucks the digit clean. 

“Everyone suffers,” Erik says, almost uncomprehendingly, as he collapses beside T’Challa’s fucked out body. 

T’Challa makes a noise that can’t be taken as for or against. 

-

The next morning, the bed is empty except for Erik. 

(That is not the first clue, but, when the book is closed, what does it matter). 

Erik is awake instantly, body taut, and the Suit descends on command. 

Erik makes no discernable decision, only makes a mad run to the Throne Room, and it’s there Erik finds him, facing the largest window, the one that opens to the east. 

“It is a hard thing, to be a King,” T’Challa says, and he does not turn around. 

Erik steps forward slowly, at an angle, and the head of the Suit dissipates. 

“Come back to bed,” Erik says stupidly, and that, he will always remember. 

“It becomes all the more difficult when the right thing, becomes the hard thing,” T’Challa ignores him, and Erik’s chest tightens, whipcord sharp. 

“The fuck you going on about,” Erik says desperately, and he doesn’t want things to be this way. He can admit that. There is nothing he wants less. 

“Do you know how long it takes to grow certain Wakandan fauna?” T’Challa asks, and when his head is tips forward, Erik can count the beginning of the cervical column of his spine. 

“My father used to say it had something to do with the immersion of vibranium in the soil. Things change because of it. They adapt.” T’Challa’s hands are restless by his side, and Erik draws nearer. 

“Now you wanna talk just to talk. What the fuck are you trying to say, here?” Erik bellows, and T’Challa’s hands still. 

Several things happen at once. Erik won’t be able to separate and catalogue them all until later, but his senses are honed enough to send a frisson of panic down his own spine.

“It was never meant to be destroyed. But, if you have a seedling,” T’Challa says, turning to face Erik at last, “it’ll take up to a year to bear its fruit.” T’Challa holds his hand in a fist, and when his eyes meet Erik’s, he’s never seen anything so dead.

The Dora come forward from the shadows as one, spears at the ready, and they’ve already encircled the room, one at every viable exit. 

He remembers seeing T’Challa awake and abundant with life last night, and he can’t help but laugh and laugh and laugh. 

“My King,” Okoye says,  and her smile is serrated, not unlike the King of the Ceiling. “It is time.” 

Erik nods in T’Challa’s direction and T’Challa’s eyes are wet, the way they always shine, as if he’s bearing the weight of every world on his already broken back. 

The Suit shutters down in order to protect Erik’s eyes, and he follows the line of T’Challa’s collarbone, and watches his own Suit detach from the teeth resting over top. 

T’Challa takes a deep breath. 

Ah, well, Erik thinks. 

Everybody dies. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the part where y'all scream your feelings at me
> 
>  
> 
> [yield strength: author's note](http://brosamigos.tumblr.com/post/172536007570/authors-note-yield-strength)


	8. part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> t'challa explores the aftermath.

That first night, he doesn’t sleep at all.

He lies there, hard and aching, legs splayed uncomfortably open in order to encompass the entire bed. 

It’s hot.

It’s hot, and he’s vitally aware of the minute shift of vibranium against vibranium, spear dragging across floor.

Okoye is just beyond his doors, as close as she can warrant without sleeping next to him. There would be three feet of space between bodies, only maintained for the sake of propriety.

She has yet to go home either, and T’Challa thinks he understands.

The Panther shifts underneath his skin, hungry and volatile. T’Challa has to remember how to keep him contained, takes deep breaths that do nothing for that idle itch he can’t quite reach.

Whenever he moves, he can still feel the phantom of it.

They don’t tell him how long it’ll take to lose that, too.

-

“You should have murdered him where he stood.”

Okoye’s spine is straight, and she motions once, sharply, with the dull edge of her spear.

T’Challa says nothing, back hunched over the glass leaflet of medical archives he’s requisitioned for appraisal.

“He deserved our worst, the most we can offer him,” Okoye continues, unhindered, “and yet, he lives.”

T’Challa’s fingertips dance over columns, pulling up his most recent records from the past year. They are numerous, and he scrolls the entries, written in shorthand by a woman he only remembers seeing a handful of times.

“If you would but communicate with me,” Okoye continues, stepping forward to quickly place a hand on his shoulder. T’Challa is not fast enough, and the violent jerk he makes causes Okoye to emit a startled noise.

For a moment, it is blessedly silent.

“Okoye,” he says, and she steps back at the word, feet soundless once more.

“If you can find him, find him,” T’Challa says, and Okoye doesn’t respond at all.

-

Her name is Cebisa, and she is 28 years old.

She tells him all of this with her eyes carefully averted, hands motionless in her lap.

“I do not--I do not wish to frighten you,” he says helplessly, hands clasped before him. “It only seems that you saw him the most,” T’Challa says, and his brain repeats  _ ErikErikErik  _ on a demonic loop.

“I saw him the most. Outside of Leader of the Border Tribe, that is,” she says, and she raises coffee-brown eyes to meet his.

She immediately looks away, and T’Challa shakes his head, confused.

“I would--thank you. For undergoing what must have been a very trying time, especially for one so young,” T’Challa begins, as if he is not only a smattering of years older than her, and Erik older still.

She glances up, sharply, and seems to forget the obsequiousness that royalty naturally instills in most Wakandans.

“A trying time, My King.”

She says it as a statement, with finality, and T’Challa’s mouth opens and closes in a parody of a question.

“What, exactly, do you remember of me?” She says, and T’Challa’s wrist trembles slightly as her voice hardens.

He glances at it curiously, the blank way it shakes, chafing against the fabric-enclosed bend of his knee.

“Not very much, which I do not think is the answer you are looking for,” T’Challa says, ignoring the miniscule burn the motion is causing.

Cebisa’s face twitches, an odd aberration, and T’Challa can feel the buzz of the Panther, pressing tightly behind his eyelids, felinoid and restless.

“You were dying, Your Majesty,” she says, and she fiddles with the white gauze of her medical uniform where it tapers below her knees.

“Every time I saw you, and it was often, you were dying.” Her eyes flutter shut, too quickly to comment on.

T’Challa takes two measured breaths. “I am sorry. I am sorry you had to see that,” he says, and he reaches out his free hand for one of her own.

She responds quickly, soft brown warmth curled up in his bigger palm, thumb rubbing at the prominent bone of his wrist.

“He did not kill you,” she says quietly, and she meets his gaze again, sturdy and unchanged. “He did not want to.”

Her voice is hard, body taut in the way that people get when the idea of Him is broached.

The skin of T’Challa’s right wrist is rubbed raw.

-

The mirror is large and unchanged, adjoining the sitting room to his office and sleep chambers, but he doesn’t remember using it while Erik sat on the Throne.

He can see his naked body now, count the twelve on each side, and he runs his fingers down them, trembling as they dig into the blank space between the false ribs and the floating ribs, right into his thoracic diaphragm.

He pushes so hard that his breath catches, stuttered out of his body by force. His eyes travel to his dick, shamefully, painfully hard, tipped upwards and curving towards the concave of his abdomen.

He can hear himself, bitten off little noises that are his and simultaneously not, wet and heavy.

There’s an ache that came the only time he has been able to bend himself to sit upon It.

By all accounts, the Throne still belongs to Erik. Neither of them yielded in name, and the Dora were not permitted to aid in the battle, as dishonor remains enough to cost him his birthright.

Yet it is T’Challa’s kingdom, fought and bled and died for, and there are no objections to him upholding the family name.

He cannot find his way to the Throne, though.

It is golden and valiant, an impenetrable fortress.

The Dora stand guard in the receiving room, and T’Challa does not enter.

His mother and Shuri call him often, and he cannot explain to them why it is that they can not yet return.

Ramonda seems to understand the danger better than Shuri, as is the maternal way.

“I could stop him. I could do anything you wanted, brother, and you know it,” she complains, hair tightly coiled in knots to the side of her head.

She is beautiful, and he cannot stand her. 

“Everything is not what it seems, Ri,” he says carefully, and the glare she levels could eviscerate him from all these miles apart.

“Could be, if you’d tell Mother or me anything,” she pouts, and it’s so precious, so utterly removed from the darkening marks on his chest that he laugh-sobs, a gutter sound.

“I did tell you,” he insists, locking his free hand into a fist, watching as it taptaptaps against his thigh, a brand.

“We are all safe now,” T’Challa says. “Isn’t that what matters?” 

_ You rich, though. You could always afford to pay it _

The brand becomes infected.

-

Okoye lets him alone.

The leash slackens day by day, and T’Challa finds himself wandering for the lack of it.

Erik isn’t anywhere that he can sense.

They don’t understand what it means to be the Panther, and nothing he can do would explain it to them.

It’s a knowing, a tightening of the skin, a hum beneath the threshold of blood.

He knows his Panther intimately, and it cannot find Erik’s. It cannot even begin to tell him where to look.

He fingers the teeth around his neck absently, and his hands rise further, dipping into the divot of his collarbone, the tendons encircling his neck.

They don’t look at him. Their glances skitter away, misplaced.

It takes him awhile to understand why, to meet Okoye’s deliberately vapid eyes as her gaze passes over him, cataloging his every limb to memory.

“We have always disagreed, Okoye,” he teases, smile half upturned, “but never have you avoided me so deliberately.”

She sits a heavy hand against the nape of his neck without preamble, a familiarity afforded to a select few outside of family.

His fingers twitch, restless against his thigh, and he catches one hand in the other and curls five into each palm.

“It is only out of love for you,” Okoye whispers, and her voice is thick, almond-shaped eyes luminous in the waning light, “that I stay my hand.”

T’Challa’s hands bounce against the give of his robe, and when he finally opens his palms, there are crescent moons decorating the surface.

-

He is supposed to visit his family at the end of the week, and he catches his breath, cross-legged on the only private balcony they don’t think to look for him.

It’s Erik’s old one, facing east.

It’s colder out here, now that the sun has set, and he stays regardless, bare toes against the vibranium core situated underneath the palace.

His Panther is languid, and T’Challa laughs, an ugly, damp sound, and it dissipates into the night.

_ It’s beautiful. Fuckin.’ Fuckin’ nothing lives up to this kinda shit. C’mere. You seen this shit hundreds of times. I get it. What’s one more, with me? _

There’s something about being alone.

He was often alone, in the Before.

It strikes him as funny, now. How often Erik left him to his own devices, when every second of every hour of every day smells of him.

When T’Challa can do nothing but wake up and remember the hard press of dick, shoved up so far that he can recall it in his bones.

It’s astonishing, really, how narrow things truly are.

_ It’s really you and yourself out here. But there ain’t nothing I can say to make you understand that.  _

T’Challa shivers, abruptly chilled. He presses both palms to vibranium-laced marble and watches as they shake, uncontrollable.

The tremors are wildest when he’s by himself, and he bites down a wail.

_ But now there’s me _

_ Another thing you don’t want _

T’Challa stands, feverish, back connecting to open door frame, curtains rustling softly behind him. The moon is high and full, and T’Challa can hear the rush of wind through the canopies of trees.

His hand stretches to his neck. It’s a mess that he strategically hides with high collars and scarves, but his fingers curve over top anyway, digging into his pulse point, the brightest flare of pain he can manage.

He can barely shut the double doors behind him, and the white curtains flutter back into stillness, catching on his shoulder at the last.

It’s loud in here, hot, and T’Challa can hear his own breathing, thick and stifling.

He barely makes it to the center of the bed, and his neck bows backwards without thinking, just in time to catch the winking shift of panels.

The melting silver glides across the ceiling and T’Challa’s hands are clenched in the sheets, a self-constructed anchor.

For a moment, there is nothing but air and the hum of his own body, and then his neck snaps to the left, toward the balcony.

“Hello?”

His hands are unmoving.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this will be one of two things:
> 
> a standalone (if y'all can only stomach this one chapter)
> 
> the beginning of part two (which will be difficult for all involved, bc my mans is fucked the fuck up)


	9. Chapter 9

His mother takes one look at him and bursts into uncontrollable tears.

Shuri is appalled, and glances from one to the other in frantic concern. “He is not a--a spirit, mother!” She says, thin hands fluttering frantically in concern.

T’Challa shrugs once, at a loss for how to handle this uncharacteristic display of emotion.

Shuri’s head swivels back and forth between the two of them, bottom lip pinched in between her teeth in a painfully familiar gesture.

His mother covers her mouth, white dreadlocks twisted into a deft bun at the crown of her head.

T’Challa strides forward, long, sweeping robe brushing against the floor.

“Mother.”

His mother’s hands reach for his face, and they falter, right at the set of his cheekbones, still high and narrow after two months time.

“Let me see you,” she whispers, and it’s oddly intimate, even though the surrounding Dora have watched him grow from boy to man, and he has played with them while they were but teenagers and training.

His mother is shorter than him and she prods his neck to the left and right, eyes wet and sunken into her face.

Shuri is breathless and T’Challa ignores her, focused on the erratic clip of his heart, loud as a waterfall in his rushing ears.

The tips of her fingers settle on his lower lip, and she presses down, gently.

“You will never tell me, will you?” She asks, and T’Challa does not bother pretending to respond.

-

It is Shuri who comes to him that first night, and T’Challa hasn’t the heart to turn her away.

“I understand not telling Mother,” she says bluntly, striding into his chambers with her unique brand of haughty grace, “but it is _me,_ brother,” she complains, and her eyes are wide and excited.

“I know you must have used every trick up your sleeve,” she says, flopping backwards on his bed, black silk rising up to cover her calves.

“It was...a long time,” she says, more subdued, and her can see her eyes dart across the ceiling, watching the same panels shudder and re-invent themselves.

He wants to wrench her from that bed in shame. There’s something ugly here.

“It was good of him,” she says, after a weighted pause in which T’Challa gives no answer, “to let you call us. If there was any good in him at all,” she revises, mouth twisted in unhappiness.

T’Challa picks at the skin of his palm, eyeing the rising swell of blood in the center.

“T’Challa,” Shuri says, sitting up so that her slender frame is hunched in the middle of the bed.

“It was kind of him,” T’Challa says dully, mouth smiling where his eyes cannot.

“You’re not telling me everything,” she says, and her voice has hardened. “I can handle it, you know,” she says, and T’Challa barks out a laugh.

_What if I cannot_

“It was more--routine, than anything else,” he lies, walking over to the bay window.

“He was King. It was in his interests to fortify defenses. Set up communications with the outside world,” he says, and Shuri nods.

“He was to expose us,” she says contemptuously, and he can feel her eyes boring into his back. “He was to give the world what they do not deserve,” she continues, and T’Challa can feel the laughter bubbling up again, frothing at his mouth.

“You do not...have to tell me everything,” Shuri amends, suddenly, gracelessly, and T’Challa is abruptly grateful.

“Not all at once,” she whispers, and his spine straightens as he listens to her approach. There’s a sense of tightness in his skin.

“You have always been a soldier,” she says, and T’Challa bows his head.

“I would have done the same,” she concludes, and she is standing next to him, head hovering at his shoulder.

The half-moons in his palm swell and heal, simultaneously.

-

It is W’Kabi who confronts him, in the end.

They have not spoken a word in well over a year, when W’Kabi comes to his apartments requesting a word with the King.

T’Challa does not immediately respond, stunned into stillness.

He is poring over a revised treaty with the Jabari, and the potential for joint-holidays in which to celebrate their shared heritage.

It is mundane and tiresome, but his hands rustle the papers beneath them when he hears W’Kabi’s firm cadence.

“Enter,” T’Challa says, detached, and W’Kabi’s distinctive blanket comes into view. W’Kabi looks tired, gait heavy and cumbersome, even to T’Challa’s currently less-than-stellar eye.

“I am at your mercy,” W’Kabi says with no preamble, and T’Challa rises, briskly.

“My mercy?” T’Challa repeats, mouth in a line.

“What, tell me, brother, do you know of _mercy?_ ”

W’Kabi inclines his head, a tip forward in recognition. “I deserve none. I am without my wife, and you have granted me continued safety and purpose in our nation.”

The words are firm but not without feeling, and T’Challa is disgusted to feel the wetness in his eyes. Never has there been a worse part of himself.

“I would have left you free of my presence for all the remaining days of our lives,” W’Kabi says, and T’Challa bare knuckles his desk, vibranium unforgiving underneath bone.

“But, a dying man recognizes death,” W’Kabi says, and his hands emerge from his robe in supplication.

“You would not arrange my funeral,” T’Challa spits, violently angry. His eyes flash golden, and W’Kabi’s own widen in fright and acceptance.

“I lay dying as you organized the disruption of our people,” T’Challa says, and his leg shakes rapidly underneath the pale blue of his gown, disturbing the fabric.

“You did not want anything from me!” W’Kabi yells, and T’Challa’s laugh is a broken bed of nails, long and grating.

“You are right. There was nothing to be done, not then, and not now.”

W’Kabi crosses the room and he grabs T’Challa’s wrist, harsh and warm, dark fingers uncurling T’Challa’s fist.

W’Kabi’s gaze skitters over the wounds even as they stitch themselves up, and they are rocking back and forth together, propelled by the force of T’Challa’s twitching limbs.

“What would you have not done for vengeance on behalf of your father?” W’Kabi’s thumb rubs over the clean skin, half circles that agitate him further.

“I have allowed your life,” T’Challa says, “in apology.”

W’Kabi’s arms encircle him, broad and bruising, and he does not say a word, even as their connected bodies tremble in tandem.

-

Shuri complains that it feels like a tomb, and reports that she has research she would like transported back to the capital.

T’Challa is loathe to let her leave, let alone his Mother, who insists they travel together.

“It is a day at most,” Shuri teases, fingers tapping at his neck. T’Challa stiffens and she ignores it, attuned.

“I do not trust the movers to bring it all back in one piece,” she says, mouth pursed.

“You are sending double the Dora necessary,” she reminds him, and T’Challa cannot make her understand that there was a long time in which there was nothing but himself and Erik.

The name tastes like sandpaper, blood in his mouth, and he repeats it in his head as they take the royal airship, flanked by eight smaller ones.

-

It’s too dark when they leave, and he paces the interior of his rooms, doors locked.

He strips as he moves, until there is nothing but his naked flesh and the pad of bare feet against cool stone.

He wants to scream, the monster under his skin clamoring for release.

There’s a hissing at the balcony, familiar and terrifying, and T’Challa still stumbles backwards as he appears, frightened by the habit.

Erik is lean and black when he crosses the threshold, and his smile is a stranger thing.

“You stay ready,” he says, and T’Challa’s air leaves him in one breath.

“We can’t keep meetin’ like this,” Erik teases, humor laced with cruelty.

His hand is possessive, and it curves over the bottom of T’Challa’s ass like it belongs there.

“That’s mine,” Erik mutters, stealing the thoughts from his head.

“When will you leave,” T’Challa asks, meeting Erik’s gaze despite the unnatural stillness of his limbs.

“When you tell me to,” Erik says, simply, and T’Challa follows the camera-flash of gold in his mouth.

“But I’ma come back,” Erik says, dipping thick fingers into the crease of flesh. T’Challa arches on tiptoes, and Erik laughs, guttural.

“I’ma keep coming back, til you give me what I want.”

T’Challa shakes his head, tosses his neck from left to right. “I will kill you before that.”

Erik snakes forward, sinking his teeth into the vulnerable skin of T’Challa’s neck. He mewls, head falling listlessly to the side, and Erik takes.

“Didn’t kill me then. Can’t kill me now,” Erik says, and he leans back down to gnaw at his claim.

“I too, stand,” T’Challa grits out, and Erik’s shoulder twitches, and both hands comes down across his asscheeks, dragging him tight against the swell of Erik’s dick.

“I already know the worst shit about myself,” Erik laughs. “You and me, that’s it.”

T’Challa squirms in his grip, hot and shaking for this living parasite between them. Erik is broad and barely leashed, and T’Challa closes his eyes.

“You make me _hungry_ ,” Erik says, unyielding, and he meets T’Challa’s eyes.

T’Challa sighs as he’s opened wide.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more, folks. t is really killing me


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all i am so sorry this took so long, real life was kicking my ass (and on a side-note that won't matter to y'all, i was forced to get acrylic nails, and i CANNOT type in those motherfuckers). anyWAY. here's wonderwall

When T’Challa awakens, he’s not alone.

That, in and of itself, is so familiar as to be frightening, and it’s that remnant of terror that allows him to roll over into the bulk tucked behind his body.

Erik makes a disoriented sound, but his abdomen tightens. He’s aware.

“You need to leave,” T’Challa says quietly, voice thick with sleep and the accustomed taste of fear. It frightens him that it doesn’t frighten him more. As if he’s reached his quota, and you’ll find nothing left of him.

Erik’s arm slides over his chest, brawny and unyielding, and T’Challa focuses on the tangible rub of the brands, raised and abrasive.

“Been doing a lot of that lately,” Erik murmurs, the sound almost indistinguishable as words. “Thought I’d try something different.”

Erik abruptly snaps his hips forward, and T’Challa caves backwards, connecting with a solid line of heat. Erik’s dick quivers, _just_ in the crease of his ass, one hot shake that forces T’Challa’s mouth open on a moan.

“This is rather familiar, by this point,” T’Challa says, attempting a levity that will never exist, except in desire.

Erik laughs, deep in his throat, and T’Challa has a moment of surprise before Erik’s bullying his legs open with thicker thighs, and one hand slides to T’Challa’s lower abdomen, the other up, to cup the vulnerable curve of his neck, calluses resting on T’Challa’s Adam’s apple.

When he swallows, it’s a dry click in his ears, like the marking of a metronome.

“What would they think,” Erik says, “if they could see you now?”

Erik starts humping in earnest, precome slick on the plump curve of T’Challa’s ass, and then dipping into the shallow divot between his cheeks, bumping up against an already slick and raw hole.

Erik takes no prisoners when he fucks, and T’Challa has a single moment of clarity as he lifts his own leg underneath the blankets, bares himself to Erik’s search.

“So ready to get me all up in there,” he mutters, and he reaches down quickly to press the crown to T’Challa’s opening.

It’s quick, and not without a flare of pain, but everything comes with its own cost.

T’Challa makes a noise he’s not proud of, and Erik laughs, teeth closing down on the nape of T’Challa’s neck, sharp and unforgiving.

“Let me in. Let me in,” he chants, and he shoves forward into residual wetness, and T’Challa should be ashamed of how loose and soaked he still is, but there’s no room for anything else here.

Erik’s balls are heavy and warm, and his hand tightens compulsively around T’Challa’s neck; a personalized collar.

“You like that?” Erik asks, nonsense, when he knows T’Challa can barely breathe, let alone speak.

“Don’t answer that,” he quips, “I know you do. Look at you,” he continues, and T’Challa’s so warm he’s burning alive, and the flame licks up his spine with every drag of dick. It sears him even hotter when Erik jerks the blankets away so he can look down and watch as his dick is swallowed whole.

T’Challa can feel his satisfaction, wants to beg, _pleasepleaseplease,_ but what would he be asking for?

“Goddamn,” Erik hisses, and he loosens his grip a fraction, just so that T’Challa’s neck falls backwards, graceless, cradled by Erik’s shoulder.

“You could call ‘em right now,” Erik says, and his hips screw faster, an obscene squelch of sound as he moves hand from stomach to pry T’Challa’s asscheeks open further, as if it’s not yet _enough._

“Okoye,” he continues, “would bust in here, fucking kill my ass,” Erik says, and he dips a finger down, just enough to trace T’Challa’s quivering rim, to suffer another abuse.

“W--would you like to call her yourself?” T’Challa grits out, shoving his own hips backwards as best he’s able, with Erik tapping at his opening with two wide fingers, laughter rumbling in his chest.

“You could,” Erik repeats, bites down sharply on T’Challa’s neck, so that he whimpers and his backwards grind stutters.

T’Challa’s dick rubs uncomfortably against the bedspread, trapped between his own body and Erik’s heavier weight, and he alternates between pressing into Erik’s strokes and humping the bed.

It’s wanton and ugly and Erik’s thrusts shiver as he catches sight of T’Challa’s motions, voice catching.

“God fucking--” Erik grits out, and then he’s coming, so deeply that T’Challa can’t even feel it at first, not until it starts leaking out, astounded that Erik still has more to give, to take.

“Keep humping that shit,” Erik says, as close to breathless as T’Challa’s ever heard him. “Keep my dick in you--just like that. Like that.”

Erik’s fingers make bruises on his hips, and T’Challa’s eyes have been closed this whole time, flying open at the delicious drag, punishing friction on his dick.

“Come on, baby,” Erik says, almost too lowly for T’Challa to make out, to understand over the roar of his own orgasm, fierce enough to make him wail.

It’s loud.

It’s too loud, and Erik’s hand comes down heavy over his open mouth, devours his scream whole.

He loses time.

When he floats back to the surface, his body is loose, and he can feel the slow slide of come down his thighs, hole flexing on air.

Erik’s side of the bed is cool, and T’Challa squeezes his eyes closed.

Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.

It takes his senses longer than he’d like to recognize the presence of _otherness_ , and he turns his neck a fraction to catch sight of Erik, fully dressed and seated by the bay window.

His hands are moving ceaselessly, knuckles cracking in the dead air. He’s otherwise motionless, and he doesn’t meet T’Challa’s frank stare, even though they share the same blood-heritage.

“Keep askin’ when I’ma leave,” Erik says, and he turns to face the sunrise, eyes flickering golden for a second, the only visible indication that he’s yet more than he’s become.

Erik smiles, a flash in the almost-morning, and T’Challa follows the catch of gold in his mouth, felinoid.

“I never leave my business unfinished.”

-

It’s wrong.

It’s more than wrong, which is the problem.

T’Challa’s never done anything so wrong in his life.

It’s unfathomable, and there’s no excuse for it.

They’ve stopped hounding him, watching him warily instead.

Shuri’s calls remain constant, and they both pretend to accept his excuses that he’s busy. He replays the voicemails on loop, visible holo-vids of her face, constrained and careful.

“Mother misses you,” she says, tinkering with a kimoyo bead, one hand tapping something off-cam.

“I’ve almost finished,” she hesitates, and her eyes meet the vid for the first time during the one-sided conversation.

“We could come back soon,” she says, and the silence is awkward, even as T’Challa’s hand tightens around the phone, and the structure cracks slightly under all that strength.

“I’ll tell Mother when you’re expecting us,” she finishes, and T’Challa laughs, and it comes out ragged, like a bark.

He replays it three days in a row, and he waits alone at night.

-

Zuri is long dead, and his homegoing to the ancestral plain is still vivid, although necessity rendered it later than normalcy dictates.

Death is a celebration, when the passing is natural, and the Wakandan people have been robbed of the honor behind it.

He fumbles his way down to the annals beneath the palace regardless, the air cool and dry beneath centuries of dirt.

The heart-shaped herb is enclosed in a secret annex that only T’Challa and Shuri know the location of, selected by his sister as soon as the usurpation was undeniable.

It’s barren by contrast, only the Sands remain, inflexible and eternal.

He kneels beside them, dipping one hand just beneath the surface.

He cannot bury himself, and he cannot ask anyone to help him.

It’s the most visceral part of everything. It has left him alone.

He presses his forehead to the red grain, hands fisted in the past.

-

“You still tryna go under?”

Erik returns two weeks later, no worse for the wear, and T’Challa’s wrists are red and raw, marks healing as fast as they can be created.

Erik eyes them carefully; his eyes miss nothing, not Before and especially not now.

“What?” T’Challa asks, and for once they are even-footed, both dressed, opposite sides of the opulent room T’Challa considers his greatest shame.

“The other side. Narnia. Wakandan purgatory. Whatever.” Erik’s face is implacable, and T’Challa’s never been able to read him.

T’Challa is an open book, by nature of his birthright, and he’s never hated the disparity more than right now.

“It is not...as simple as that,” T’Challa says, and Erik’s smile is a weapon, and he tilts his head consideringly.

“Ain’t it?” Erik takes a step forward, and then another, until he’s looking down at T’Challa’s upturned face. His hand clamps down heavily on T’Challa’s vulnerable neck, and he arches into that grip, soil to the sun.

“I can put you under,” Erik says, a careless shrug.

“Why?”

Erik is silent for a long moment, and T’Challa thinks he will ignore the question, retain the answer.

“Call it survival instinct,” he says, and T’Challa’s hands tremble in the folds of Erik’s shirt.

-

It’s dark, and then it’s not.

The sky is lavender at dusk, and unlike before, there are no panthers roaming the landscape.

He finds his Baba whole and human, facing the sunset.

T’Challa feels exposed in the ceremonial white, and he brushes imaginary dirt off the lapel. This land is formless. Shapeless.

“What would you have me do, Baba?” T’Challa asks, arms open in supplication. “The wrongness...it has become a poison. It is in my blood.”

There’s a desperation to his voice that isn’t there in his waking hours. He wills his father to turn. To face the monster.

But then.

T’Chaka has already run once before.

T’Challa can feel the time slipping away.

“With everything,” T’Chaka says as he turns, “there is a penance.”

There are claws in his chest, and the blood drips to meet the earth.

-

No one is surprised when he tells them he is leaving.

Okoye looks, relieved, if that is the appropriate sentiment, but not for the sake of the nation.

“It is not forever,” he assures the assembled, and W’Kabi stares at him, eyes wet.

“Then for how long, my brother,” he demands, and T’Challa flinches at the honorific. His existence here is a stain.

“When. When Killmonger was upon the Throne,” he begins, and he pauses for the automatic unsheathing of spears, Okoye’s battle signal at the ready.

“I did what must be done, to secure my life---and by extension, those of my people.” The clans eye him gratefully. There is no one better suited for the kingship, in their mind. To suffer under such cruelty.

“I must--recover. In order to find myself again, I must remove myself.” T’Challa holds his hands together, a loose clasp in front of his navy robe. It contains the raw shivering he can no longer hide.

“The Princess returns tomorrow, in the company of her women-at-arms and the Queen Mother,” T’Challa says. “The Kingsguard will take upon the mantle of Queensguard until my return.”

T’Challa fixes the purple-clad retinue with what’s left of his dignity.

“You will spare no protection for that of my family.”

It is Okoye that responds, iron in her voice, a new facet of a new time.

“There will be no mercies shown, My King,” she promises, and T’Challa inclines his head.

“Then I will take my leave. All inquiries to my person can be relayed through your Queen.”

W’Kabi rises, and Okoye’s spear flashes once as it whizzes through the air to land diagonally at her husband’s feet.

W’Kabi’s forward progress is halted, but he shows no sign of noticing the projectile.

“I would have your word that you will return, Your Majesty.”

T’Challa rubs at the fine tendons in his wrist, a slight drag of pain just underneath the skin.

“In one fashion or another.”

-

He packs an extra herb and a handful of clothes.

The airship is incognito, and with the vibranium already loaded beforehand, it will last him quite some time.

He plans to find the world.

He pauses next to the pitch, one bare hand settled on the black finish.

It’s high noon, and the sun beats down on his neck, coloring the bruises littered just above the beginning of his shirt.

T’Challa holds his breath as he turns around, waiting.

“I should have killed you.”

Erik’s answering smile is crooked.

“You shoulda tried.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me [at this bitch](http://brosamigos.tumblr.com/) if you've got any prompts, more to say, or just wanna shoot the shit.
> 
> thanks for being so fucking awesome, y'all. i'd love to know your thoughts


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